I kind of like how TBB is distributed as a bunch of files in a directory and it gave me an idea for a very simple way to package this as a deb. The package would include the latest TBB tarball and a launcher script. When you run the launcher, it checks to see if ~/.torbrowser/$VERSION exist. If it doesn't, it extracts TBB into it. Then it runs ~/.torbrowser/$VERSION/start-tor-browser. When a new version of TBB comes out, the update would just have a new TBB tarball, and the launcher script would be adjusted to include the new version number. I read through both tickets about this on trac.torproject.org, and I'm not sure it will satisfy everyone, or be allowed in Debian, but I think it's a good start. It does, however, avoid the problem where Debian users could have a different fingerprint than other TBB users, and doesn't require there to be an iceweasel-src package. And it's really simple. I went ahead and implemented this as a kind of sloppy proof-of-concept: https://github.com/micahflee/torbrowser Here's the really simple launcher script: https://github.com/micahflee/torbrowser/blob/master/torbrowser-bin It totally works. I even added a "Tor Browser" application launcher that uses the TBB icon. Thoughts? On 01/15/2013 05:56 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote: > On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 07:28:34PM -0500, Micah Lee wrote: >> Are there plans to release the Tor Browser Bundle as a package in Tor's >> official repos, e.g. http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/? >> >> This would make keeping an up-to-date TBB much more convenient. > > It sure would make things more convenient, I agree. > > See for example > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3994 > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5236 > > Basically there are a whole pile of logistical issues, stemming mainly > from the (quite reasonable) policies around how debs are allowed to > interact with each other. > > So, it's something that a lot of smart Debian people have thought about, > and no clean-enough answer has emerged yet. > > It is deeply unsatisfying to me that Linux, the platform most of our > developers use, is the one with the least user-friendly Tor package > support. But it will take a lot of juggling and coordination to produce > a solution that all sides find ok. > > --Roger > > _______________________________________________ > tor-talk mailing list > tor-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk > -- Micah Lee https://twitter.com/micahflee
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