[tbb-dev] Thoughts about future Tor Browser plans

[Matthew Finkel]

Yes, that's correct. I haven't seen many Fenix-specific sec patches over
the last few months, so I feel comfortable with this trade-off right
now. I don't expect we'll fall too far behind Fenix and its
dependencies, so uplifting shouldn't be too difficult, and I am hoping
we can just track Fenix's nightly train and ride that to release every
two months.

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 07:01:42PM +0000, Tom Ritter wrote:
> Does this mean that on Android, you're tracking GeckoView tightly, and
> Fenix less tightly?  So you'd need to essentially uplift Fenix sec
> fixes until you rebase?
> 
> -tom
> 
> On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 at 14:49, Matthew Finkel <sysrqb at torproject.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > (tldr; read the last paragraph)
> >
> > In October [0] we were very excited about the prospect of all Tor
> > Browser platforms following the Firefox Rapid Release schedule. However,
> > in April (now), Android is still the only platform following the rapid
> > release train and Windows, macOS and Linux remain on the extended
> > support release (ESR).
> >
> > As we move closer to the next ESR transition, this year it is beginning
> > at Firefox 91 in May [1], I am wondering whether we should reverse
> > course and slow down. At this point, we cannot safely transition all
> > platforms onto the rapid release train before October (when 78esr
> > reaches its EOL), so the only option is moving all desktop platforms
> > onto FF91esr and then evaluate migrating onto the rapid release train
> > after that.
> >
> > Unfortunately, we are still a very small team, and the current situation
> > is already pushing our team to its limits. Yesterday I spoke with Georg
> > about another subject, and he briefly mentioned the idea of keeping the
> > desktop platforms on ESR instead of moving onto the rapid releases. This
> > alone wouldn't make much difference, and I previously discarded this
> > idea, because we're already fighting all of the code churn for Android
> > (although some of the code, like the automatic updater, is not used on
> > Android). The important piece of this plan is reducing Fenix's burden,
> > too.
> >
> > My current thought is that we move desktop platforms from 78esr to
> > 91esr, and we begin rebasing our Fenix branches (and dependencies) only
> > every 2-3 months. The only exception is geckoview where we continue
> > rebasing our geckoview branches on the existing schedule. In addition,
> > we drop desktop patches from the geckoview branches, and Android patches
> > from the ESR branches. We could've (and should've) done the latter
> > simplification earlier, but the former change makes future ESR
> > transitions a little more complicated. I think we can live with that.
> >
> > - Matt
> >
> > [0] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2020-October/001154.html
> > [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar
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