[tor-talk] torsocks is broken and unmaintained

[grarpamp]

> I think instead of inventing torsocks it would have been much better if
> there was a Tor connection library and applications could easily use it.

Preload (as in torsocks) was invented to hook the network system calls
for apps where there was no socks5 support. Expecting an app developer
to code-in a secondary Tor lib when they haven't thought or bothered
to implement the simple standard SOCK5... is a pretty far stretch.
Besides, socks5 in a client has more uses than Tor in a client would.
I would much rather see socks5 support in wget, elinks, mutt, fetchmail,
etc than be limited by having to link them against Tor. And as a bonus
those apps would then use the socks option when compiled statically,
as it is built in. Right now you're forced to stay dyn so preload works.
Socks5 is thought a simple Tor connection library, it just doesn't do
any native Tor things that linking to an actual Tor lib might do.

> Compare this with the i2p network and applications designed for the i2p

I don't really like the idea of limiting myself to just the apps provided
with a given network system. I2P is a bit hard to use with your app
of choice, even Tor is that way in some cases. That's why I generally
advocate looking closer at Phantom, it works with any modern app
(yes, that means IPv6).