guardianproject
[Feature Request] Orbot switching from C-Tor to Arti
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Arti is the newest fork of C-Tor built with Rust instead of C++: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti. Switching to Arti would make Orbot much more stable, especially when starting and stopping pluggable transports.
Describe the Solution You'd Like Replace C-Tor with Arti
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Arti is the newest fork of C-Tor built with Rust instead of C++: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti. Switching to Arti would make Orbot much more stable, especially when starting and stopping pluggable transports.
Describe the Solution You'd Like Replace C-Tor with Arti
I like to second this suggestion.
By the way arti is not a fork. it is a rewrite from scratch.
We definitely understand what Arti is, as we have been advising the team on the mobile usage of Arti.
In particular, we are the developers of: https://gitlab.com/guardianproject/tormobile/arti-mobile-ex and have already tried plugging it into Orbot... it mostly works, but not all features we have (hosting onion services for instance) we available the last time we tried.
@n8fr8 if most of it works, why not just start out with a very minimal test version with just the basics, ie; just VPN and power user mode.
I think @bitmold was taking about supporting a stripped down version of Orbot in the past... Maybe a stripped down version with arti is the way to start.
I recall that Arti client has now reached a point of stability equal to or even surpassing C-Tor.
I tried Tor VPN based on onionmasq. It's a good start but it's missing power user mode which makes it unusable for my purposes. I would prefer something that also requires building arti for test purposes instead of only using arti crates.
The latest news on Tor Blog talks about Tor changing it's encryption model: https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-cgo/
One interesting note is that CGO negoitiation for onion services will only be supported by Arti and not the traditional c-tor. This seems like another reason to switch over to Arti.