Re: polipo-tor deb/ubuntu native package

[andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 03:21:22PM -0800, travis+ml-tor-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote 15K bytes in 259 lines about:
: I've advertised this a few times, to virtually no response.  The
: tor-assistants mlist has been confused, with people telling me they
: weren't sure what their ubuntu strategy was, whether they even wanted
: debian packages, etc.
: 
: I haven't, for the life of me, been able to even figure out who to
: talk to.  I've posted emails perhaps 3 times, with virtually no
: feedback.  Nobody's apparently doing anything.  I don't blame them,
: because the debian packaging tools and docs are complicated and
: annoying.

There has been much discussion over a combined tor and polipo package,
as well as a vidalia-tor-polipo package for deb-based systems.  

The core issue is that packages should not overwrite other packages
config files.  We've generally assumed (wrongly) that linux users
understand their system and can handle manual configuration of a few
packages, such as tor, polipo, and vidalia.  The general answer for
users who just want a tor client is to use the tor browser bundle.  

The real answer is to fix firefox so it doesn't need a proxy between it
and Tor.  We patch firefox to do just this in the osx and linux tor
browser bundles.  Polipo was a fine kludge until either we started
patching firefox or mozilla fixed their many-years-old socks bug.

I tried to summarize this state of affairs in
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#WhydoweneedPolipoorPrivoxywithTorWhichisbetter.

As for ubuntu, we've started to work with their build teams to get
an updated tor in their repositories.  We do build our own debs for many
versions of ubuntu, but not your polipo-tor specific deb.

If you want to talk about integrating your build and config into our
build system, please open a ticket,
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/report/10.  

The great thing about free software is that you're welcome to do just
what you're doing.  You don't like the situation, so you solve it.
Great.    

-- 
Andrew
pgp key: 0x74ED336B
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