15:01:17 <richard> #startmeeting Tor Browser Weekly Meeting 2024-02-06
15:01:17 <MeetBot> Meeting started Tue Feb  6 15:01:17 2024 UTC.  The chair is richard. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
15:01:17 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
15:01:21 <richard> the pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-tbb-keep
15:01:59 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> Hi!
15:06:17 <thorin> ... ping ... hello .. anyone hear me?
15:06:23 <PieroV> pong
15:06:29 <richard> pong
15:06:44 <richard> last week we shipped 13.5a4 TB and MB
15:06:51 <richard> \o/
15:07:44 <richard> dan_b, clairehurst: we even have some crasehs for the invalidated iterator in the TorProviderGV on the dashboard (whcih you've already fixed after we sign+tagged)
15:08:07 <richard> so hurray the play store does sometimes provide useful stack traces
15:09:20 <richard> I've been working w/ Bella on building a roadmap through the ESR transition, but I think everyone knows roughly what they should be working on next
15:09:25 <richard> to summarise
15:10:11 <ma1> o/
15:10:38 <richard> - dan_b, clairehurst -> native android torconnect UX and associated systems
15:11:13 <dan_b> 👍
15:11:19 <richard> - ma1 -> betterboxing, security, backports, etc
15:11:31 <ma1> 👍
15:11:35 <dan_b> (aw, wait does that mean the fix wont be in alpha till the one after this week?)
15:11:56 <richard> - pierov -> installers!!!
15:12:11 <PieroV> Windows installer?
15:12:22 <richard> (yes)
15:13:22 <richard> - henry-x -> UX polish, bug fxies needed for the s96  features (about:preferences changes), onion-errors UX updates
15:14:28 <richard> - boklm -> MB linux packaging (deb to start with), OpenH264 reproducibility
15:14:35 * richard hopes they didn't forget anyone
15:14:53 <henry-x> yup, should I target a new gitlab issue with the small tweaks?
15:15:02 <richard> henry-x: yes please
15:15:18 <henry-x> ok!
15:15:19 <richard> next week we will likely get back a list of issues from the security audit
15:15:41 <richard> i'll triage and hand out bugs to whomever makes sense
15:16:05 <richard> dan_b: yes unfortunately we won't see the fix until the next alpha
15:16:20 <dan_b> oh well
15:16:24 <PieroV> Is it a crash that happens to many people?
15:16:29 <PieroV> If needed we can do an additional alpha
15:16:58 <richard> however as we're going in the latter part of our 13.5 release cycle fwe will likely be having more alphas as we push features (ie mayube we push out a new alpha when we get the initial native android UX out)
15:17:09 <richard> PieroV: the numbers for that crash are currently pretty small/unalarming
15:17:18 <PieroV> ack
15:17:25 <richard> i only mentioned because it was a 'huh that's interesting, a useful Android stack trace"
15:18:08 <PieroV> (brb)
15:18:17 <richard> - boklm -> (also all of your somewhat behind-the-scenes build maintenance work and torbrowser-launcher work)
15:19:37 <boklm> ok!
15:20:22 <richard> one thing that has been somewhat at the forefront of my mind of late thanks to all of the planning/organising bellatchau and I have been doing of late is that I may have a poor understanding of how much of your time is actually spent divided up between different types of work
15:20:32 <PieroV> (back)
15:21:10 <richard> which does make it tricky for me to estimate how much availability we actually have for "new" things
15:22:18 <richard> we currently have everyone allocated for 25% of their time going to maintenance, bug fixes, etc; time not spent on new features
15:23:11 <richard> the point being, i don't really know if that's accurate, or if its actually a lot more than that
15:24:33 <richard> would folks be willing to somehow keep track of how much of their time is spent on different buckets for work for awhile (say a couple of weeks)
15:24:38 <henry-x> I don't really know for myself...
15:25:52 <dan_b> i mean i did bug work last week? but it was on the firefox-android torBoorstrap issue which was also work i was signed up for continuing?
15:26:16 <richard> I realise this would add more overhead/annoyance in the short term
15:26:48 <richard> dan_b: on top of the question of is this a bug or a feature
15:27:08 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> richard: relatedly, do we have any idea what the spread looks like for this figure over time? I don't know about anyone else here but my impression is that my distribution varies very wildly from week to week, if I monitored it for 2 weeks I would not have much confidence that the numbers would extrapolate well
15:27:12 <dan_b> bug in a new feature
15:27:17 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> But yes getting a bigger sample is obviously even more bothersome
15:27:26 <richard> Jeremy: yeah, that is also incredibly true
15:27:37 <bellatchau> would it be helpful to share the roadmap and priorities? this way we can kind of align if the estimates are ok ...
15:27:51 <ma1> Trying to keep track very reasonable, a 2 week sample seems small though. Looking backwards, my feeling is that I plan for some feature work for next week, then something buggy (from h1, security@tpo or else) comes up and at least 50% of the time goes with that.
15:29:02 <dan_b> but yeah, I can prolly keep better track for that purpose 🙂
15:29:07 <richard> which is why or planning purposes we're assuming 100% of the time during the ESR transition will be spent on ESR stuff which isn't true or evenly distributed, but is more to keep us from over-committing when we're dealing with unknown work from Mozilla during that time period
15:29:59 <richard> ma1: you're probably right re the time frame
15:30:46 <richard> how about we try for a few weeks and if the consensus is this is too much of a PITA we stop otherwise we keep going? vOv
15:31:41 <ma1> wfm
15:31:43 <clairehurst> Sounds good!
15:32:29 <richard> rather than bug versus feature a better division may be maintenance vs feature (ie a bug related to a new feature would be under feature, not maintenance; a surprise release because of a chemspill is maintenance, implementing shiny designs from donuts is feature, etc)
15:32:52 <richard> ok cool
15:33:05 <donuts> yeah, I would characterize it as any work not directly related to shaping a new feature
15:33:34 <richard> yeah
15:33:38 <donuts> basically we're trying to figure out our new feature capacity so that we can align UX and Apps better, and not overwhelm everyone in the process :)
15:33:58 <donuts> so even if this is a little bothersome to track in the short term, it'll definitely be worth it in the long term
15:34:02 <richard> also please only purely percentage breakdowns!
15:34:56 <dan_b> and report, in the pad? i can do last week's breakdown easily enough then
15:35:10 <richard> and if there are things here that should be counting as its own bucket feel free to add (eg MEETINGS, community outreach, NoScript maintenance (ma1 :D) , etc)
15:35:12 <henry-x> I'm ok with trying. Is it just the two slots that we should track?
15:35:54 <richard> for now at least 'maintenance' versus 'features', feel free to add if there is other stuffs that don't quit fit in either
15:36:16 <richard> in the meeting pad is great, i can coallate for the spreadsheet god (bellatchau :) )
15:37:02 <bellatchau> i refuse this title!!!!
15:37:04 <bellatchau> jajaja
15:37:31 <bellatchau> but really appreciate all the work that goes into this
15:37:42 <richard> spreedsheet god
15:37:45 <richard> :3
15:38:20 <richard> ok that's enough admin
15:38:29 <richard> do other folks have topics to discuss?
15:38:41 <richard> is anyone blocked on something?
15:38:47 <richard> anty MRs collecting dust and need attention?
15:39:02 <thorin> obligatory fingerprinting mention
15:39:10 <henry-x> not from me
15:39:12 <thorin> no love for the FPing :-(
15:39:21 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> just one small thing here
15:39:21 <PieroV> richard: there's a couple of MR from me
15:39:30 <PieroV> About MB installer
15:40:05 <richard> oh and those of your on the interview comittee (PieroV, clairehurst) that can be its own special bucket because that was also a big question mark for me when bella asked how much effort it is
15:40:16 <richard> ok, Jeremy first then PieroV please :)
15:40:29 <richard> (dan_b you shoulda volunteered quicker ;) )
15:40:42 <dan_b> haha lol no worries
15:41:25 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> which is that I think Arthur and I will finally have a couple of MR's in the next month or so that will get rid of the obsolete Namecoin/Torbutton patch, so that Namecoin can be re-enabled in Linux Nightly (cringe that it took this long), and add a replacement that handles the onion naming in the circuit display in a way that's agnostic to Namecoin / FPF / whatever other naming systems might be used at some point
15:42:17 <clairehurst> Are we still meeting for s96?
15:42:34 <richard> ack, nice to know Arthur's still around :D
15:42:42 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> The thing that gets rid of the obsolete patch should be trivial to review, not sure about the replacement patch, but we can get rid of the obsolete patch quickly and then review the replacement patch on a more leisurely schedule per whatever capacity you guys have
15:42:49 <richard> s96 meetings are OVER
15:43:12 <richard> um, but actually maybe I will follow up with gaba on that
15:43:20 <donuts> hrm I don't think so :p
15:43:25 <richard> I'll let you know!
15:43:37 <donuts> the project doesn't end for another couple of months
15:43:39 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> richard: yes! Arthur is still around, and doing cool things, just a tad overextended between Brave and PrivacyTests and other things
15:43:51 <richard> jeremy: yeah i can imagine
15:43:53 <richard> ok, s96 has been un-cancelled
15:44:16 <richard> but like i said the only sponsor obligatory work there will be security issue fixes
15:44:34 <richard> (even though a lot of the work you're doing is fallout from s96)
15:44:43 <richard> ok, PieroV installers?
15:44:48 <Jeremy_Rand_36C3[m]> richard: but yeah I'm seeing a decent number of organic mentions of PrivacyTests in various places that don't normally have privacy geeks there, so Arthur is at least having a good impact
15:44:49 <clairehurst> cool thanks!
15:46:15 <PieroV> Yes, I have a couple of MRs for the MB installer (mullvad-browser!102, tor-browser-build!906), plus another couple of other MRs waiting for reviews
15:48:09 <richard> ack, i'll get to those this week
15:48:23 <PieroV> Thanks
15:49:32 <richard> alight
15:49:39 <richard> its been a lovely(?) meeting
15:49:45 <richard> have a good rest of your weeks o/
15:49:48 <richard> #endmeeting