Re: tor web-browser doesn't work on musl

[u-uy74@aetey.se]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 11:01:12AM -0300, Daniel Simon wrote:
> Hi, I face a bug when running tor-web-browser from my new system that uses musl.
> 
> 1) wget https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/5.5.4/tor-browser-linux64-5.5.4_en-US.tar.xz
> 2) tar zxvf ./tor-browser-linux64-5.5.4_en-US.tar.xz
> 3) cd tor-browser-linux64-5.5.4_en-US
> 4) ./start-tor-browser.desktop
> 
> EXPECTED: tor web browser launches as it does on glibc systems
> WHAT HAPPENS: Nothing
> 
> I assume there is a fix...
> Thank you very much.

I guess the only complete fix does not belong here but is to package the
tor browser so that it includes all libraries which it depends on. Then
TBB would work on all computers with a compatible kernel. Regrettably,
the tor project did not choose this approach. You may want to ask why
and/or suggest this on their mailing list or even contribute a better
packaging there.

Of course an alternative is to maintain multple TBB packages, one relying
on glibc, another on musl, a third on another C library and on different
variants of resources which are assumed to be present locally...
It is hard to expect that the TBB team would do this.

A third alternative would be to make musl more binary-compatible
with glibc. It is though unclear whether this is possible
to a sufficient degree ("sufficent" is going to vary with time too)
and whether other local resources expected by TBB would be present on
most musl-based distros (I doubt this).

Regards,
Rune