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Build updates with Orfox.
Building Firefox for Android on the current tor browser dev branch[1] caused some problems with the app that it produced. Finding a fix to this seemed almost impossible with the limited log that the app produced and so I decided to apply patches manually from the GECKO380esr_2015050513_RELBRANCH to get the tb branch. A set of news updates related to this process can be found at the Orfox news [2] page. Eventually, after going through all the patches and testing out the applications it was producing, I managed to boil it down to one file that was causing the problems, toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp . This file seems to be modified as a patch to bug 9173 [3] . Currently I've replaced this with the esr38 release branch file. I'd like to know whether this is fine, if not, what other fix can be found for this problem. My current working branch can be found on my github [4] and the branch for Orfox [5] is there as well.
Firefox for Android has multiple network implementations that work at the Java/Android layer, a report of that can be found on the Orfox project page [6], [7]. I am working alongside mozilla to speed up fixing these issues as well [8].
[1] https://github.com/arthuredelstein/tor-browser/tree/tb_GECKO380esr_201505051... [2] https://dev.guardianproject.info/projects/orfox-private-browser/news [3] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9173 [4] https://github.com/amoghbl1/tor-browser/tree/orfox-tb_GECKO380esr_2015050513... [5] https://github.com/amoghbl1/Orfox [6] https://dev.guardianproject.info/attachments/download/1580/firefox-for-andro... [7] https://dev.guardianproject.info/news/219 [8] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1169421
On 6/4/15 12:54 AM, Amogh Pradeep wrote:
... Eventually, after going through all the patches and testing out the applications it was producing, I managed to boil it down to one file that was causing the problems, toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp . This file seems to be modified as a patch to bug 9173 [3] . Currently I've replaced this with the esr38 release branch file. I'd like to know whether this is fine, if not, what other fix can be found for this problem.
I am not sure if you need that patch or not, but behavior of the built-in updater and other things may depend upon it being present. The following Trac comment explains the purpose of the 9173 patch: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9173#comment:8
In short, that patch makes it so the browser looks under the TorBrowser/Data/Browser/ directory for user data (including the browser profiles, disk cache, and so on).
Does OrFox use an on-disk layout that is similar to the one Tor Browser uses?
What problem was caused by the 9173 patch? Profile not found? Something else?
With OrFox, how does the firefox binary get started? Or is the entire startup process different on Android compared to desktop Firefox?
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Amogh Pradeep -
Mark Smith