[tor-bugs] #12716 [meek]: Make meek-client-torbrowser take the firefox command as a parameter

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#12716: Make meek-client-torbrowser take the firefox command as a parameter
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     Reporter:  dcf     |      Owner:  dcf
         Type:  defect  |     Status:  needs_revision
     Priority:  minor   |  Milestone:
    Component:  meek    |    Version:
   Resolution:          |   Keywords:
Actual Points:          |  Parent ID:
       Points:          |
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Comment (by dcf):

 So we have a pretty good solution that works on linux and mac, which is
 that the meek-client-wrapper program takes as an option a single pathname
 that points to a shell script that execs firefox. But the same idea does
 not work automatically on windows because of a lack of exec--when meek-
 client-wrapper kills its child process (the shell script/batch file), it
 does not kill the firefox process.

 Potential workarounds are to make the windows shell script into a JScript
 file that does the trick where it watches its own stdin for closure
 (attachment:12716-4.patch.gz). This solution is pretty reasonable but it
 makes me uncomfortable. I'd never heard of this JScript before now. I also
 don't want to dive into js-ctypes for this problem.

 It seems there are two motivations behind this ticket, #12716:
  1. To reduce coupling between the tor-browser and meek repositories
 (don't need to change something in the meek repository when the layout of
 Tor Browser changes).
  2. To enable packaging on e.g. Debian, where firefox is in a different
 place than it is in Tor Browser.

 So I'm thinking of preserving the status quo with respect to how it works
 on windows, which fails to solve #1, but doesn't prevent us from making a
 wrapper program that works on other platforms (what infinity0 already
 wrote) that can solve #2. I'd even be willing to replace meek-client-
 torbrowser with a meek-client-wrapper that executes a shell script on
 linux and mac, concede that it doesn't work on windows, and provide a
 --magic-torbrowser-windows-exec option that makes it do what meek-client-
 torbrowser currently does on windows; i.e., execute firefox directly at a
 hardcoded path.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12716#comment:23>
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