[tor-project] PieroV's Monthly Status Report, January 2024

Hi everyone!
Here is my status report for January 2024.

For most of the month, I worked on the Windows installer for Mullvad Browser [0]. This also involved working on NSIS. I finally succeeded in building it with Clang [1], so Rust remains the only project requiring GCC on Windows. Then, I refactored our existing Windows installer [2].
At this point, I could write a brand new installer for Mullvad Browser. It hasn't been reviewed yet, and it will need some polishing. However, it will help me to deal with the default browser feature, which I've just started investigating [3].

In addition to that, I helped with the January releases. I rebased stable and alpha onto Firefox 115.7.0esr and prepared the stable releases.
At the moment of publishing, the Play Store rejected our x86 APK because it exceeded the 100MB threshold [4]. Therefore, I patched our build system to repack the APK using 7-zip, which offers better compression also for zip files. We saved around 4MB, enough to get the APK approved.
Long-term alternatives could be Android App Bundles [5], which would force us to switch to Play App Signing, or APK Expansion files [6]. But we are trying to remove more unused assets first.

Another Android problem I worked on was the incompatibility of 13.5a3 with API < 26 devices because I had used some NIO API.
Finally, I resolved some issues with spoof English and reviewed a pair of big merge requests about S96 deliverables.

Best,
Pier

[0] Build system installer for Mullvad Browser on Windows (#200) ยท Issues ยท The Tor Project / Applications / Mullvad Browser ยท GitLab
[1] Use Clang to compile NSIS (#40606) ยท Issues ยท The Tor Project / Applications / tor-browser-build ยท GitLab
[2] Do a cleanup of the NSIS script (#41065) ยท Issues ยท The Tor Project / Applications / tor-browser-build ยท GitLab
[3] Make 'Mullvad your default browser' does not work on Windows (#80) ยท Issues ยท The Tor Project / Applications / Mullvad Browser ยท GitLab
[4] The Android x86 APK for 13.0.9 is too big (#41066) ยท Issues ยท The Tor Project / Applications / tor-browser-build ยท GitLab
[5] About Android App Bundles  |  Android Developers
[6] APK Expansion Files  |  Android Developers

ยทยทยท

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