Re: Tor 0.2.0.22-rc is out

[phobos@xxxxxxxxxx]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 05:13:27PM -0400, arma@xxxxxxx wrote 1.0K bytes in 24 lines about:
: > : vidalia-bundle-0.2.0.22-rc-0.1.1-tiger.dmg and
: > : installed it. I now have Tor 0.2.0.22-rc and Vidalia
: > : 0.1.1. I also have a folder for Torbutton 1.1.17 in my
: > : Library, but Firefox still has Torbutton 1.0.4.01
: 
: This would seem to be a bug, yes? If people leave "Torbutton" checked
: in their installer, they expect the installer to clobber any current
: Torbutton install. Right?

I think I've fixed this in r14238 and r14239 commits.  I'm not sure the fix
is much better from a user experience perspective.  What happens is
the user will notice firefox start up and prompt to install
torbutton-version.xpi.  This method appears to be the "correct" way to
install and upgrade extensions per profile.  The list of potential
issues with this new way is:
1) If the user has multiple profiles, only the profile set as default
will be prompted to install the bundled torbutton;
2) Users may wonder why they are being asked to install an extension in
firefox, when all they checked was "torbutton" in the Vidalia/Tor
bundle;
3) Users may have the same concern as #2, but never even realize
torbutton is checked by default; and finally,
4) Users may cancel the installation and not realize torbutton is not
installed.  This is the "hey, tor is just as fast as my normal internet
connection" issue.

Previously, we used the --install-global-extension option on the command
line.  The drawbacks to this were the lack of overwriting existing
extensions of the same name, and all users and all profiles had
torbutton installed for them; whether they wanted it or not.

I'm open to other ideas as to how to do this.  I tried manually
installing torbutton for them by reverse engineering the mozilla
extension installation process.  My reverse engineering was probably not
complete, as this method was problematic.

The other part that changed in r14238/9 is that osx users no longer have
Vidalia set to start on login automatically.  This is because the
installer runs as root via sudo, and the proper command, "defaults",
won't run correctly in a sudo shell.  The fix for this may be to install
the vidalia bundle into $HOME and not assume people use OSX like a
multi-user unix system, but rather each user runs their own tor/vidalia
setup.  Of course, if two or more people use the same OSX system, the
first one to startup vidalia/tor wins. The second, and subsequent, users
will receive errors indicating the Tor ports are already taken.

I'm open to suggestions, and patches to Vidalia's pkg/osx/TorPostflight
and pkg/win32/vidalia-bundle.nsi.in to arrive at a better solution.

-- 
Andrew