Hi All,
Apologies for the delay in sending this. Attached (or below) is the proposal for migrating the TorLauncher legacy extension to WebExtension. The main problem with directly moving TorLauncher to using WebExtensions is the two Extensions APIs are not 1-to-1. There was significant functionality previously available that is not available with WebExtensions. In particular these involve launching a child process and controlling it. This is a primary objective of TorLauncher, so we needed an alternative.
As a result, this proposal takes a mixed approach. Part of the functionality of TorLauncher will remain as an extension and the remaining functionality will be directly implemented into Tor Browser.
From the mobile/Android perspective, TorLauncher is a strange
requirement at this moment. On Android, Orbot controls and configures tor, and external Apps cannot configure tor which is the purpose of TorLauncher. In the future, we may prefer another design and integration, providing a better user experience.
Although the proposal is long, it is mostly documenting the extension's existing functionality.
Thanks, Matt