Consider dropping support for Mac OS 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8

Unless someone talks them out of it, Mozilla plans to drop support for Mac OS 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 in Firefox 46, which means we will need to worry about this when we transition Tor Browser to the ESR 52 codebase. Read more here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/gXZj0rQWEfI

We need to decide whether Tor Browser can and should continue to support those older versions of Mac OS.

added TorBrowserTeam201705 component::applications/tor browser ff52-esr owner::boklm priority::medium resolution::fixed severity::normal sponsor::4 status::closed tbb-7.0-must type::defect labels

Trac:
Parent: N/A to #21147 (moved)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1255588 is relevant.

Is there any chance that you will do not as Mozilla does?

Replying to cypherpunks:

Is there any chance that you will do not as Mozilla does?

We decided on Monday to follow Mozilla as it is too risky that any security fix assumes macOS > 10.9 and would break on macOS < 10.9.

This ticket is then about the transition off macOS < 10.9.

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, TorBrowserTeam201702 added

Trac:
Sponsor: N/A to Sponsor4

As the majority of users prefer to stay in the dark/silence/unawareness/etc, the most effective way to research the impact of what this ticket about is to add a warning message to the stable release of Tor Browser, e.g. something scary like "Your OS is unsupported. OK", and see the reaction of users on available communication channels. Otherwise, their installations will be silently ruined by the automatic update to 7.0.

Replying to cypherpunks:

Otherwise, their installations will be silently ruined by the automatic update to 7.0.

We have a mechanism to prevent updates on the unsupported OSes, so users' installations should not be ruined. Instead, they will see a message that points them to a website where we will provide information. We did something similar when we discontinued 32-bit support on OSX.

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, tbb-7.0-must added

Moving tickets to March

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201702 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201703 added

Trac:
Owner: tbb-team to boklm
Cc: N/A to tbb-team
Status: new to assigned

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1269811 has the changes in the update infrastructure so that users don't get new updates.

I am not sure yet if we need to do something for OS X users < 10.9 that download an ESR 52 Tor Browser and want to run it.

Minimum target is now 10.7: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1269790 (but still bundles won't run below 10.9)

If we want to be fancy we can provide a learn more link on the about dialog and the text that no further update is possible. Not sure exactly what we need to do to activate that, I just stumbled over https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1291488.

Remmove remaining tickets over to April

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201703 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201704 added

Not strictly needed for getting Tor Browser based on ESR52 compiled.

Trac:
Parent: #21147 (moved) to N/A

Getting this on our radar for alpha release in less than two weeks.

Trac:
Keywords: tbb-7.0-must deleted, tbb-7.0-must-alpha added

Trac:
0001-Bug-18530-set-minSupportedOSVersion-to-10.9-on-OSX.patch

I attached a patch for tools/update-responses/config.yml to add minSupportedOSVersion=10.9 on osx64. We also update the minSupportedOSVersion for osx32 (although there are probably not many osx32 users remaining, since it has been deprecated for more than 2 years).

Trac:
Status: assigned to needs_review
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201704 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201704R added

Looks good to me. I'll update the config.yml accordingly. It seems we need (to check) two further things in this bug:

1. A proper text explaining what's going on for OS X users < 10.9. Should we link to some Mozilla article? I looked a bit at https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-and-Update/Firefox-support-has-ended-for-Mac-OS-X-10-6-10-7-and-10-8/ta-p/32725 but that might not be that helpful in our context.

2. Do we need to do anything to notify OS X users on < 10.9 that Tor Browser won't work? IIRC Firefox won't extract from the DMG on an unsupported system anymore. Having such a mechanism would probably be best (in addition to change the text on the website saying the min supported version is 10.9)

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201704R deleted, TorBrowserTeam201704 added
Status: needs_review to needs_information

https://gitweb.torproject.org/builders/tor-browser-bundle.git/commit/?id=64f2c7dd739a2f842a5aea5ed824683efc653aa4 Not only March is gone, but 45.9esr too ;)

Replying to cypherpunks:

https://gitweb.torproject.org/builders/tor-browser-bundle.git/commit/?id=64f2c7dd739a2f842a5aea5ed824683efc653aa4 Not only March is gone, but 45.9esr too ;)

Thanks. This got fixed with commit 77db4e6ba0acf381d5c7184a1a245b487fd68c3c on master.

Replying to gk:

2. Do we need to do anything to notify OS X users on < 10.9 that Tor Browser won't work? IIRC Firefox won't extract from the DMG on an unsupported system anymore. Having such a mechanism would probably be best (in addition to change the text on the website saying the min supported version is 10.9)

The behavior of 7.0a3 is the same as the one for Firefox 53: There is a stop sign shown over the icon and if a user drags the app and tries to start it a dialog pops up that the macOS version is too old. I think we are fine in that regard.

The idea in comment:14 might still be a good one to have.

Replying to gk:

The idea in comment:14 might still be a good one to have.

A little digging reveals that Mozilla sends an XML response that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<updates>
    <update type="minor" unsupported="true" detailsURL="https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-osx" displayVersion="48.0">
</update>
</updates>

The unsupported="true" triggers the display of a special panel within the about dialog. See https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-esr52/source/browser/base/content/aboutDialog-appUpdater.js#261 (or search that file for unsupported).

We would need to modify the code to look for minSupportedOSVersion instead.

Replying to mcs:

Replying to gk:

The idea in comment:14 might still be a good one to have.

A little digging reveals that Mozilla sends an XML response that looks like this: {{{

}}}

The unsupported="true" triggers the display of a special panel within the about dialog. See https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-esr52/source/browser/base/content/aboutDialog-appUpdater.js#261 (or search that file for unsupported).

We would need to modify the code to look for minSupportedOSVersion instead.

But that means it's already too late for this feature (for the alphas) and would be unless we ship a 6.5.3 with it?

Replying to gk:

But that means it's already too late for this feature (for the alphas) and would be unless we ship a 6.5.3 with it?

Ah, you are correct. Maybe it is not worth the trouble then.

Moving our tickets to May 2017.

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201704 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201705 added

Replying to gk:

Looks good to me. I'll update the config.yml accordingly. It seems we need (to check) two further things in this bug:

1. A proper text explaining what's going on for OS X users < 10.9. Should we link to some Mozilla article? I looked a bit at https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-and-Update/Firefox-support-has-ended-for-Mac-OS-X-10-6-10-7-and-10-8/ta-p/32725 but that might not be that helpful in our context.

Having that in the blog post for Tor Browser 7.0 seems enough to me.

Trac:
Status: needs_information to closed
Resolution: N/A to fixed

We are beyond the alpha testing. Moving tickets for tbb-7.0-must.

Trac:
Keywords: tbb-7.0-must-alpha deleted, tbb-7.0-must added

closed

mentioned in issue #21074 (moved)

mentioned in issue #21710 (moved)

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#18530 (closed)