[tor-bugs] #3792 [TorBrowserButton]: Pre-launch Firefox and have it wait for Tor to connect (was: TBB takes too long to start up)

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#3792: Pre-launch Firefox and have it wait for Tor to connect
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 Reporter:  phobos            |          Owner:  mikeperry                    
     Type:  enhancement       |         Status:  assigned                     
 Priority:  major             |      Milestone:  TorBrowserBundle 2.3.x-stable
Component:  TorBrowserButton  |        Version:                               
 Keywords:                    |         Parent:                               
   Points:                    |   Actualpoints:                               
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Changes (by mikeperry):

  * priority:  normal => major
  * component:  Tor Browser => TorBrowserButton


Comment:

 Ok, here's the reduced plan:

 Patch Firefox to allow it to be started windowless by Vidalia in parallel
 to Vidalia launching tor.

 Have Torbutton poll on the control port with 'getinfo status/enough-dir-
 info' at 100ms intervals until the control port is open and responds that
 Tor is ready to build a circuit. (If you are such a purist that this
 amount of polling irritates you, then you just volunteered to write the
 first event-driven Tor controller in Javascript. Otherwise, I am open to
 suggestions for alternate polling intervals.)

 When Tor is ready to launch a circuit, we can then launch the AJAX upgrade
 check and then just wait for completion of that before launching the first
 browser window.

 In fact, I think the only new code I have to write for all of this to work
 will be the control port polling piece in Torbutton.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3792#comment:20>
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