[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent Report for May 2014

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work that the Pearl Crescent team did in May (Kathy Brade 
and Mark Smith):

* Made more progress on the Firefox-based updater for TBB.  Mike
   landed our patches to reorganize the TBB directory structure
   to be more like Firefox's, which will simplify the Firefox
   updater patches and fix other problems as well (e.g., two icons
   in the Mac OS dock).  The new directory structure will appear in
   TBB 4.0.  We also made progress on integration of the updater
   with the Gitian-based build process (not completed yet).
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6457
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11641

* Experimented with building TBB on an Amazon EC2 instance.  While
   this was successful (using an LXC-based build), the wall clock
   time was only slightly shorter than our own in-house build
   machine.  The quest to build TBB more quickly will continue.

* Participated in the weekly TBB dev meetings on IRC and in
   various design discussions on IRC and on the mailing lists,
   including those related to incorporation of the Tor Browser
   manual into TBB.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11698

* Attended Roger Dingledine's and Rachel Greenstadt's talks at
   the University of Michigan (just a few miles drive for us).

* Reviewed some Firefox patches:

    "Prevent TorBrowser from creating clipboardcache turds"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9701

     "Create preference for DOM storage / image cache isolation"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10819

* Helped close various Tor Launcher issues, including:

     "Change &#160 to   in network-settings.dtd"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11699

     "empty/untranslated locales in Tor Launcher"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11754

     "Proxy Type menu not set correctly"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11772

     "Tor Launcher doesn't auto-fill Proxy Type"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12145

* Spent time triaging, discussing, and developing patches
   for more various other Tor Launcher issues, including:

     "UI for Proxy and Firewall selection is confusing"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11405

     "UI for ExitNode country selection"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11406

     "settings not saved after backing out of setup wizard"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11773

     "Open Settings button doesn't stop bootstrap"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11879

     "Please make a test connection to tor SOCKS port"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12040

     "Infinite loop when 'identity mismatch' error is raised"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12053

* Assisted with assorted TBB 3.6.x / PT issues, including:

     "geoip6 file is missing"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10425

     "obfsproxy shebang should point to python2, not python"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11109

     "about:tor should not show green if TorLauncher is not working"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11510

     "tor opens Windows console window"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11919

Our goals for June:
* Get the Firefox-based updater for TBB (bug 4234) ready for
   alpha testing.

* Contribute to TBB in whatever way we can, including assisting
   with migration of browser patches to the Firefox 31 code base.

* Continue to add polish to Tor Launcher.

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