[tor-bugs] #6060 [Tor Client]: add http proxy support to Tor

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#6060: add http proxy support to Tor
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 Reporter:  proper       |          Owner:  arma               
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  assigned           
 Priority:  normal       |      Milestone:  Tor: very long term
Component:  Tor Client   |        Version:                     
 Keywords:               |         Parent:                     
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:                     
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Comment(by ioerror):

 Replying to [comment:13 Sebastian]:
 > polipo also works today, but we don't want to ship it.

 I think that largely that we don't want to ship it because it had a lot of
 bugs that we found during an audit. It was also long abandoned and who
 knows the status now? I'm not sure.

 > The biggest reason against including it in TBB is that it isn't
 necessary for any function of TBB, and an additional maintenance burden,
 and also extra code for the bundle.

 I'd want this in the Vidalia bundle and probably not in TBB. In an ideal
 world, we'd have a way to keep TBB entirely isolated and if users want a
 system Tor they'd install the Vidalia bundle or some system packages.

 >I do understand that some people want an http proxy, but they are in such
 a dramatic minority that I do not think it is worthwhile to consider
 including it in TBB.

 I think the key here is that it is really a pain to use a SOCKS proxy and
 even more of a pain for users to chain it to some random HTTP proxy. If we
 have a minimal shim (heh) and it's also managed by Tor, I think we'd find
 people using it. I know that I would use it. I know that TorBirdy would
 like to use it because of the gpg issues (#6940 and #2846) among others.
 Users of TorBirdy at the moment must install the Vidalia bundle - as it
 stands that is already quite a lot of setup.

 > Now, this isn't to say that you can't provide ways to easily package
 shim and make it available as an additional download or something like
 that, so that people who need it can easily get it

 I'm glad that shim appears to work and I'd want to ensure it is actually
 safe, usable, etc before we'd ship it. I would however point out that
 Tor's SOCKS port requires no additional setup - it is just there and boy
 does that confuse users. I can imagine that for TorBirdy, we might
 actually stuff a Tor and a shim into it if we're really having issues. I
 would however really like to avoid putting binary components into TorBirdy
 and rather I'd like to add a useful helper to the Vidalia bundle. Though I
 wouldn't mind if like tor-fw-helper, shim was managed by tor - it would
 make me likely to use that same config on many different platforms, even
 when I don't have Vidalia or X windows.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6060#comment:14>
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