[tor-bugs] #11242 [Tor Launcher]: Fragile version checks lead to unexpected out of date advisement erroneously

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#11242: Fragile version checks lead to unexpected out of date advisement
erroneously
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 Reporter:  anon          |          Owner:  brade
     Type:  defect        |         Status:  new
 Priority:  major         |      Milestone:
Component:  Tor Launcher  |        Version:
 Keywords:                |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                |         Points:
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 The check for a new Tor version opens a file on the file system for
 version information comparison.

 There are scenarios where this file may be written to by an old version,
 or a exiting slowly version, as part of a TBB upgrade. (Or other scenarios
 where users do things totally unexpected and not recommended.)

 Thus: when checking for newer versions, an old version is referenced,
 which will always claim to be out of date despite not being so.

 ---

 Possible improvements:

 If the version check including the version of the build of the
 checker/writer somehow this condition would be avoided.  Note that keeping
 the version of the author/checker in the file itself could lead to race
 conditions requiring some thought, while a version in the file path would
 not conflict. (e.g. old and new write to version.txt compared to old write
 to git-abcdef12-version.txt and new write to git-f00ff00f-version.txt)

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11242>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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