Re: [tor-talk] Does tor browser bundle can goes on Mac App Store?

[Andreas Jonsson <andreas@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/18/12 12:08 PM, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) wrote:
> 
> On 9/17/12 5:46 PM, Andrew Lewman wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:35:53 +0200 "Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)"
>> <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>>> i am wondering if Tor is downloadable also trough Mac App Store
>>> and/or if some consideration has already been done on that
>>> topic.
>> It is not available in the app store. It has been discussed before,
>> see 
>> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2012-March/003382.html
>
>> 
> 
> the discussion above is related to iPhone iOS while i've been
> referring to the Apple Mac OS X App Store, that can be used to
> deliver signed and sandboxed applications on Mac OS X machines.
> 
> It's also a "trusted" delivery method, in the sense that as long as
> you consider Apple a trusted manufacturer, from technical point of
> view it's a secure application delivery and update system.
> 
> On Mac OS X 10.8 i am using almost only Mac App store applications
> and very few other signed applications.
> 
> We should also consider that Windows 8 will follow a similar
> approach, so before or later it will be required for Tor to start
> deliverying application trough application store on Desktop systems.
> 
> We've been considering that for APAF / GlobaLeaks.

Hi!
There are a few reasons that will make it very hard to distribute the
TBB via the Mac appstore.

The first reason being the license, in that apple decides on the license
for the software in the app-store (not 100% sure on the details, maybe
there is a way?)

The second is the app-sandbox. The policy enforced on the application is
declared in /System/Library/Sandbox/Profiles/application.sb, and while
extremely liberal, isn't really the issue. (oh btw, you have zero
control over the app-sandbox. like it or leave it. ).


if ( tldr; )
	FF doesn't use native cocoa, it only applies makeup to make it look
like native osx app. will result in many problems, especially with
saving/loading stuff to disk.

else

When an application is using the mac app-sandbox, it gains it's own
directory in $HOME/Library/Containters/bundle-id

This will be shown to the application as Its home directory. Access to
the users home outside of this is denied by the sandbox, instead the
application must call on pboxd to gain access to users files. (pboxd
then temporarly copies the file to container directory, allowing the app
to work with the file).

This is done automatically if you have a cocoa app and turn the right
knobs in xcode. Firefox is not a native cocoa app, so saving files to
disk will not work. Will mostly result in FF crashing iirc the last time
i played with it.

/a
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