[tor-bugs] #18904 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Mac OS: meek-http-helper profile not updated

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#18904: Mac OS: meek-http-helper profile not updated
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 Reporter:  mcs                             |          Owner:  mcs
     Type:  defect                          |         Status:
 Priority:  Medium                          |  needs_information
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser        |      Milestone:
 Severity:  Normal                          |        Version:
 Keywords:  ff45-esr, TorBrowserTeam201605  |     Resolution:
Parent ID:                                  |  Actual Points:
 Reviewer:                                  |         Points:
                                            |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by mcs):

 Replying to [comment:5 gk]:
 > To recap: the problem exists because the updater is not reaching that
 part anymore and thus, there is no way to get a newer meek extension and
 prefs file to the user, right?

 Right. On Mac OS, the meek-client-torbrowser program now creates the meek-
 http-helper profile by copying everything in a template directory. But it
 only knows to do that if the destination profile directory does not exist
 at all.

 > While thinking about your solution it occurred to me that the profile
 would get overwritten every time the user had chosen to use meek because
 that causes the profile dir getting used and thus the checksum is not
 matching anymore. Is that intended?

 Actually, we are not planning to generate a checksum based on the files
 that are on the user's computer. Our idea is to generate a checksum once
 when we build Tor Browser and then use the checksum file as a kind of
 version to indicate that the meek-http-helper profile was created from a
 different template (that is, from a different version of Tor Browser).
 That way the profile will only be removed and recreated when the template
 files are modified.

 > Is there a way to get the Tor Browser version from meek-client-
 torbrowser code? Probably, I guess. Couldn't we force-update the profile
 dir instead in case a new Tor Browser version got installed?

 We could try to get the version number and store it in a file. But I am
 not sure how the meek-client-torbrowser code could easily get the version
 number. The checksum file we propose would serve as an automatically
 generated version number, but we could instead store the Tor Browser
 version number in a similar way, e.g., in a file named tor-browser-
 version.txt within the meek-http-helper profile. And that file could be
 created at build/bundling time. Using a hash of the meek files would be
 slightly more efficient since the meek-http-helper files (extension plus
 user.js) do not change with every Tor Browser release.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/18904#comment:6>
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