[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent status report for November 2013

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work that Mark and Kathy did this month:

  * Continued to make progress on ticket 4234:
      "Investigate the Firefox update process"
      https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234
    - ported in-progress patch to Firefox ESR 24 code base.
    - added feature to replace folders when applying an
        update (this will allow us to update bundled extensions).
    - added capability to set TBB version number via a configure
        option (necessary because we sometimes need access to the
        version number when user preferences are not yet available).

    Our goal is to use a patched version of Firefox's software update
    mechanism to make it a lot easier and less painful for end-users
    to keep TBB up-to-date.  Remaining work to do:
       - Create a process to generate MAR files when new releases of
         TBB are generated.
       - Address other deployment details such as where the TBB
         update service will be hosted, update service certificates, etc.
       - Get patches reviewed and committed.

  * Fixed an additional case (paths that contain '.') for ticket 9173:
      "Relocate RelativeLink functionality to Firefox patch"
      https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9173

  * Reported and researched ticket 10201:
      "Firefox ESR 24 sometimes hangs during exit on Mac OS"
      https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10201
    We are still investigating this; so far we know that Firefox's
    nsSocketTransport service is not shutting down, which prevents
    the browser from exiting.

  * Contributed to the discussion in ticket 9444:
      "Create deterministic TorBrowserBundles with Pluggable Transports"
      https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9444

  * Did some testing of TBB 3.0rc1 builds on Mac and Windows.
    No problems found.

  * Responded to Mike Perry's questions regarding various Firefox
    ESR24 patches.

-- 
Mark Smith
Pearl Crescent, LLC