Unblock Tor auto-syncing from Debian

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Binary package hint: tor

Tor synchronization from Debian is currently blocked. Kees suggested that I should formally ask to have Tor unblocked.

The specific packages required from Debian are 'tor' and 'tor-geoipdb'; 'torbutton' would also be nice but isn't as pressing.

We'd like Natty users to have Tor and the associated software. Hopefully we can find a way to keep Tor Ubuntu users up to date in the future without having to use third party repositories.

[Artur Rona (ari-tczew)]

What about bug #413657 ?

[Jacob Appelbaum (jacob-appelbaum)]

The main blocker for bug #413657 was that we didn't have anyone inside Tor that wanted to ensure that Ubuntu got the attention that it deserved. That has now changed.

I'm a Tor developer and I'm also committed to seeing that our Ubuntu support finally returns to a reasonable state of affairs. The current state requires something like twelve steps to install Tor, it is by far the worst out of any platform we support.

I'd be happy to work with anyone else in Ubuntu to make this happen. This has the blessing of the Tor project - for whatever that is worth. The Debian packages are maintained by Peter and while he wants nothing to do with the Ubuntu packaging, we've been building Ubuntu packages for years and they've been working well.

[Jacob Appelbaum (jacob-appelbaum)]

In case it isn't clear, Peter has done a ton of work on the Debian and consequently Ubuntu packaging. We're very grateful for his efforts and we just want to normalize the process for many Ubuntu users. Advanced users will still want to use his alpha builds in the Tor repo; we just want to make it simpler for people who would have a hard time setting up a third party repo.

[Erinn Clark (erinn)]

As a Debian and Tor developer, I fully endorse Jake in this endeavor.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

Tor has now been unblacklisted. Thank you Jacob for taking on maintainership of tor in Ubuntu. :)

[Jacob Appelbaum (jacob-appelbaum)]

Wonderful! Thank you!

[Pander (pander)]

Please link https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tor to upstream project http://www.torproject.org/

Perhaps also good to have a look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tor/+bugs?field.status:list=NEW and see which ones can be closed.

Will a reference for the Natty release appear here https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tor soon?