[tor-dev] Entreaty for spreading awareness about ProxAllium, a useful frontend for Tor

[Damon (TheDcoder)]

Hello everyone!
First I would like to apologize if I am posting this in the wrong place, as I am not sure where I should post this. So this mailing list seemed to be the best option available.

As some of you may (most likely not) know me as the developer of a small tool called [ProxAllium](https://proxallium.org/) which is a nice frontend for Tor, it is a nice alternative to keeping Tor Browser up and running if you want to use Tor's SOCKS proxy. I started work on it almost 2 years ago, and I had the idea to develop this for more than 2 years... I consider it fairly stable now that I have been using it that length of time.

Recently one of my newer users expressed disappointment that they didn't find any reference to ProxAllium while they were doing some research on how to operate a Tor bridge on Windows, they have suggested I do more "advertising". I have realized that my tool might be useful to a lot of people and many of them would not even be aware of its existence which would be a shame, as it would increase the regular usage of Tor if it was easy to start Tor casually, to [torify](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorifyHOWTO) applications.

I was hesitant to write this email as I had previously thought that ProxAllium was not good enough for Tor standards. But then I realized I was applying a somewhat artificial logic and thus preventing its growth in usage. I am aware that it has a few fundamental issues (like being written in a closed source language) but I think it is good enough to be used as a helper tool.

I am planning a rewrite in a better language (and with a FOSS toolchain) so that it can be cross-platform and more performance efficient. Currently I am struggling with motivation to work on ProxAllium as I am not getting enough input from users.

The purpose of this email is to earnestly request that the Tor project consider helping to spread awareness of ProxAllium by adding references to it in places like the wiki and the "projects" list on the website. I am not seeking official endorsement, but a mere mention so that everyone involved can benefit from Tor. I am ready to provide any kind of assistance to the fullest extent I can.

Thank you for reading, hopefully I didn't come across as too arrogant or pushy with my proposal, English is not my native language and I struggle with writing in the vein in which I am thinking :)

With Regards, Damon H. (TheDcoder)

[grarpamp]

Post by Damon (TheDcoder)
https://proxallium.org/
adding references to it in places like the wiki and the "projects" list on the website.

People are free to create their own wiki account and add descriptions
and links to their tools / projects on the relavant wiki pages.

https://trac.torproject.org/

You probably want to go a few cycles of feedback and development
with users on the wiki and the tor-talk / tor-relays lists before ready
to having it appear on website "projects" list.

Have fun :)


Projects that distribute binaries should of course be open source,
and reproducible per build instructions included with their source.
The concept is here...

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_compilation
https://reproducible-builds.org/
https://twitter.com/ReproBuilds
https://diffoscope.org/

https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/reproducible_builds/
https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/
https://wiki.freebsd.org/ReproducibleBuilds

[Damon (TheDcoder)]

Thanks for the reply grarpamp!

Post by grarpamp
People are free to create their own wiki account and add descriptions
and links to their tools / projects on the relavant wiki pages.

I already have an account in Trac, however I was worried that editing the wiki to mention the appropriate tools would potentially count as advertising, so I didn't consider it before...

Post by grarpamp
You probably want to go a few cycles of feedback and development
with users on the wiki and the tor-talk / tor-relays lists before ready
to having it appear on website "projects" list.

I agree, but I am not sure where I should start with getting feedback as it is quite hard to find users of ProxAllium.

Post by grarpamp
Projects that distribute binaries should of course be open source,
and reproducible per build instructions included with their source.

This is also one of the cons of the programming language I am using (AutoIt) to develop ProxAllium. AutoIt uses tokenization during compilation which adds random data to the binary thus making it impossible to have reproducible builds.

​With Regards, Damon H. (TheDcoder)

Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.​

[grarpamp]

Post by Damon (TheDcoder)
I am not sure where I should start with getting feedback as it is quite hard to find users of ProxAllium.

People can't be forced to use or comment.

Yet if it's a tool that interacts with tor or the ecosystem
of tor tools, post up an announce and feedback request
to tor-talk and see.

When you do, try to wrap your lines at around 72 chars.

Post by Damon (TheDcoder)
AutoIt uses tokenization during compilation which adds random data to the binary thus making it impossible to have reproducible builds.

Some projects that are interested in reproducibility
choose to document exceptions. So long as the diffs
don't actually do anything, and aren't a huge mess,
potential users checking reproducibility can cross
them out of the diffs they see on their end.

See if folks there have input on that.

[Damon (TheDcoder)]

I apologize for the late reply, I got busy with work and I had to sort
out some things related to ProxAllium.

Post by grarpamp
People can't be forced to use or comment.
Yet if it's a tool that interacts with tor or the ecosystem
of tor tools, post up an announce and feedback request
to tor-talk and see.

True, thank you for the suggestion, I will try posting a suggestion
on the tor-talk mailing list and request any feedback and comments.

I am also planning to discontinue the AutoIt based binaries in the later
major releases, so this will be the last one to feature some improvements,
any major suggestions will be added to my checklist for the future version.

Post by grarpamp
When you do, try to wrap your lines at around 72 chars.

Will do :)

Post by grarpamp
Some projects that are interested in reproducibility
choose to document exceptions. So long as the diffs
don't actually do anything, and aren't a huge mess,
potential users checking reproducibility can cross
them out of the diffs they see on their end.

Unfortunately due to the nature of how tokenization works (script code
is pseudo-encrypted by a randomly chosen cipher) the whole output will
differ from each build (the interpreter excepted). There is currently no
known workaround to build reproducible binaries/executables in AutoIt.

I plan to address this issue in the re-write.

With Regards, Damon H. (TheDcoder)

Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Post by grarpamp

Post by Damon (TheDcoder)
I am not sure where I should start with getting feedback as it is quite hard to find users of ProxAllium.

People can't be forced to use or comment.
Yet if it's a tool that interacts with tor or the ecosystem
of tor tools, post up an announce and feedback request
to tor-talk and see.
When you do, try to wrap your lines at around 72 chars.

Post by Damon (TheDcoder)
AutoIt uses tokenization during compilation which adds random data to the binary thus making it impossible to have reproducible builds.

Some projects that are interested in reproducibility
choose to document exceptions. So long as the diffs
don't actually do anything, and aren't a huge mess,
potential users checking reproducibility can cross
them out of the diffs they see on their end.
See if folks there have input on that.
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