Bug 40924: Customize the remoting name.

Merge Info

Related Issues

• tor-browser#41509 (closed)
• #40924 (closed)

Backporting

Timeline

• Immediate: patchset needed as soon as possible
• Next Minor Stable Release: patchset that needs to be verified in nightly before backport
• Eventually: patchset that needs to be verified in alpha before backport
• No Backport (preferred): patchset for the next major stable

(Optional) Justification

• Emergency security update: patchset fixes CVEs, 0-days, etc
• Censorship event: patchset enables censorship circumvention
• Critical bug-fix: patchset fixes a bug in core-functionality
• Consistency: patchset which would make development easier if it were in both the alpha and release branches; developer tools, build system changes, etc
• Sponsor required: patchset required for sponsor
• Other: please explain

Issue Tracking

• Link resolved issues with appropriate Release Prep issue for changelog generation

Review

Request Reviewer

• Request review from an applications developer depending on modified system:
  • NOTE: if the MR modifies multiple areas, please /cc all the relevant reviewers (since gitlab only allows 1 reviewer)
  • accessibility : henry
  • android : dan
  • build system : boklm
  • extensions : ma1
  • firefox internals (XUL/JS/XPCOM) : ma1
  • fonts : pierov
  • frontend (implementation) : henry
  • frontend (review) : donuts, richard
  • localization : henry, pierov
  • nightly builds : boklm
  • rebases/release-prep : dan_b, ma1, pierov, richard
  • security : ma1
  • signing : boklm, richard
  • updater : pierov
  • misc/other : pierov, richard

Change Description

We used to pass --class (for X11) and --name to firefox, but they were lost in case of restart (updates, changes of language, etc...).

We can set the remote name instead, which Firefox uses to set these options.

While we could set it in tor-browser.git, doing it from this repository allows us to also set the channel name.

Tested on Tor Browser on Linux only (though we set the remote name also for other platforms, since it actually has other uses), both on X11 and on Wayland.

It seems to work, but I haven't tried to mock an update.

I'm quite confident the issue will be solved, too, but I'd prefer testing it directly in nightly builds.