[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent report for March 2014

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work that the Pearl Crescent team (Kathy Brade and me) did 
in March:

* Participated in the weekly TBB dev meetings on IRC and spent some
   time observing the PT meetings.

* Made more progress on using the Firefox-based updater for TBB.  We:
   - Rebased our patches to accommodate the new Mozilla git repo.
   - Posted to tbb-dev and discussed a proposal to change the TBB
     directory structure to be more like Firefox's.  Doing this will
     simplify our updater patches and solve other problems (e.g.,
     dock icon issues on Mac OS).  We are experimenting with these
     changes and so far the results are promising.
   - Posted to tbb-dev and discussed a proposal to use the major
     Firefox version number in our TBB version numbers.  This also
     would simplify our updater patches.  For now, we are not
     pursuing this due to various unresolved issues and the potential
     for user confusion.
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234
   https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6457
   https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2014-March/000027.html
   https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2014-March/000028.html

* Worked with Mike and others to add more polish to the "Use Default
   Bridges" option within Tor Launcher (TBB 3.6).  The user interface
   will be improved in the future based on feedback received.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10418
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11180

* Landed a Firefox patch to add a "get current process ID" API that is
   used by Tor Launcher.
     https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=962314

* Spent time triaging and addressing various Tor Launcher issues in
   a continuing effort to add polish to that extension and to make
   make life easier for the support team.  Some issues we made
   contributions to:
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11199
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11132
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11191
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11343
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11347

* Assisted with various TBB 3.6b1 / PT issues, including:
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10398
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11124
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11193
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11200
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11242

Plans for April (same as March):
* Contribute to the TBB 3.6 in whatever way we can.
* Make more progress on 4234 (Firefox-based updater for TBB).
* Continue the efforts to add polish to Tor Launcher.

-- 
Mark Smith
Pearl Crescent
http://pearlcrescent.com/