[tor-bugs] #21704 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Warn users when installing Tor Browser based on ESR 52 on not SSE2 capable Windows machines

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#21704: Warn users when installing Tor Browser based on ESR 52 on not SSE2 capable
Windows machines
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 Reporter:  gk                        |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  enhancement               |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium                    |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                    |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  ff52-esr                  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                            |         Points:
 Reviewer:                            |        Sponsor:  Sponsor4
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Comment (by gk):

 Replying to [comment:6 cypherpunks]:
 > Replying to [comment:3 gk]:
 > > Replying to [comment:2 cypherpunks]:
 > > > Well, it seems you've decided to follow Mozilla blindly in all its
 decisions, good or bad. But it's a cul-de-sac.
 > > > Is there any chance that you could change your mind?
 > > > If Mozilla is doing something wrong in a hurry, and you see it, why
 don't you tell them about it?
 > > > If they want to make supplementary things mandatory (e.g. SSE2),
 when other FOSS devs are doing the opposite, why don't you mind?
 > > > If they advertise the worst proprietary things in history (SSE2,
 needed to be "fixed" by SSE3, and Pentium 4, yes, even Intel confirmed
 that) in 2017(!), why nobody asks what's going on?
 > > > So, having ESR52-based TBB cross-compiled and operational (w/o
 SSE2), why do you still drag those ### patches into Tor Browser, even when
 Mozilla requires them for Windows only?
 > > > Don't break the rules, please.
 > >
 > > Thanks for pointing this out. Actually, we only want to have this for
 Windows right now, as Linux at least won't break until ESR 59
 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1274196). I am updating the
 ticket accordingly.
 > Huh, it's not a surprise actually that you prefer not to answer complex
 questions... Let's hope it's just because of lack of time, though...
 > There are a lot of MoCo decisions recently which require public
 discussion, but we all know that Mozilla is ignoring the community, thus
 forking instead of ESR59 looks more and more actual.
 > As for your decision to break only Windows now, it looks no good.
 Despite your communication with mozdevs, it seems you don't know the story
 about this design decision, but you may ask to tell you about it.
 > Shortly, Windows won't break until ESR59 too, because it was required
 for MSVS 2015u2 and opt-in Rust (msvs target available only).

 Have you tried to compile it with non-MSVC? If you e.g. use mingw-w64
 you'd see pretty fast that that statement is wrong:
 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1331335. Thus, we need SSE2
 support unless we want to specifically patch code for non-SSE2 support. In
 addition to that, not following Mozilla here has the great risk of getting
 security fixes that rely in their Windows variant on SSE2. We'd have to
 backport those fixes as well while which I think we don't want to risk.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21704#comment:8>
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