Update the announcement

[privoxy.git] / doc / webserver / announce.txt

               Announcing Privoxy 3.0.27 stable
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Privoxy 3.0.27 stable scales better in multi-user environments
and brings a couple of tuning directives.
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ChangeLog for Privoxy
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- General improvements:
  - Add a receive-buffer-size directive which can be used to
    set the size of the previously statically allocated buffer
    in handle_established_connection().
    Increasing the buffer size increases Privoxy's memory usage but
    can lower the number of context switches and thereby reduce the
    CPU usage and potentially increase the throughput.
    This is mostly relevant for fast network connections and
    large downloads that don't require filtering.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Add a listen-backlog directive which specifies the backlog
    value passed to listen().
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Add an enable-accept-filter directive which allows to
    toggle accept filter support at run time when compiled
    with FEATURE_ACCEPT_FILTER support.
    It makes testing more convenient and now that it's
    optional we can emit an error message if enabling
    the accept filter fails.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Add a delay-response{} action.
    This is useful to tar pit JavaScript requests that
    are endlessly retried in case of blocks. It can also
    be used to simulate a slow Internet connection.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Add a 'trusted-cgi-referrer' directive.
    It allows to configure another page or site that can be used
    to reach sensitive CGI resources.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Add a --fuzz mode which exposes Privoxy internals to input
    from files or stdout.
    Mainly tested with American Fuzzy Lop. For details see:
    https://www.fabiankeil.de/talks/fuzzing-on-freebsd/
    This work was partially funded with donations and done
    as part of the Privoxy month in 2015.
  - Consistently use the U(ngreedy) flag in the 'img-reorder' filter.
  - listen_loop(): Reuse a single thread attribute object
    The object doesn't change and creating a new one for
    every thread is a waste of (CPU) time.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Free csp resources in the thread that belongs to the csp instead
    of the main thread which has enough on its plate already.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Improve 'socket timeout reached' message.
    Log the timeout that was triggered and downgrade the
    log level to LOG_LEVEL_CONNECT to reduce the log noise
    with common debug settings.
    The timeout isn't necessary the result of an error and
    usually merely indicates that Privoxy's socket timeout
    is lower than the relevant timeouts used by client and
    server.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Explicitly taint the server socket in case of CONNECT requests.
    This doesn't fix any known problems, but makes
    some log messages less confusing.
  - Let write_pid_file() terminate if the pid file can't be opened.
    Logging the issue at info level is unlikely to help.
  - log_error(): Reduce the mutex-protected area by not using a
    heap-allocated buffer that is shared between all threads.
    This increases performance and reduces the latency with
    verbose debug settings and multiple concurrent connections.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Let zalloc() use calloc() if it's available.
    In some situations using calloc() can be faster than
    malloc() + memset() and it should never be slower.
    In the real world the impact of this change is not
    expected to be noticeable.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Never use select() when poll() is available.
    On most platforms select() is limited by FD_SETSIZE while
    poll() is not. This was a scaling issue for multi-user setups.
    Using poll() has no downside other than the usual risk
    that code modifications may introduce new bugs that have
    yet to be found and fixed.
    At least in theory this commit could also reduce the latency
    when there are lots of connections and select() would use
    "bit fields in arrays of integers" to store file descriptors.
    Another side effect is that Privoxy no longer has to stop
    monitoring the client sockets when pipelined requests are
    waiting but can't be read yet.
    This code keeps the select()-based code behind ifdefs for
    now but hopefully it can be removed soonish to make the
    code more readable.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Add a 'reproducible-tarball-dist' target.
    It's currently separate from the "tarball-dist" target
    because it requires a tar implementation with mtree spec
    support.
    It's far from being perfect and does not enforce a
    reproducible mode, but it's better than nothing.
  - Use arc4random() if it's available.
    While Privoxy doesn't need high quality pseudo-random numbers
    there's no reason not to use them when we can and this silences
    a warning emitted by code checkers that can't tell whether or not
    the quality matters.
  - Show the FEATURE_EXTERNAL_FILTERS status on the status page.
    Better late than never. Previously a couple of tests weren't
    executed as Privoxy-Regression-Test couldn't detect that the
    FEATURE_EXTERNAL_FILTERS dependency was satisfied.
  - Ditch FEATURE_IMAGE_DETECT_MSIE.
    It's an obsolete workaround we inherited from Junkbuster
    and was already disabled by default.
    Users that feel the urge to work around issues with
    image requests coming from an Internet Explorer version
    from more than 15 years ago can still do this using tags.
  - Consistently use strdup_or_die() instead of strdup() in
    cases where allocation failures aren't expected.
    Using strdup_or_die() allows to remove a couple of explicit
    error checks which slightly reduces the size of the binary.
  - Insert a refresh tag into the /client-tags CGI page when
    serving it while a client-specific tag is temporarily enabled.
    This makes it less likely that the user ends up
    looking at tag state that is out of date.
  - Use absolute URLs in the client-tag forms.
    It's more consistent with the rest of the CGI page
    URLs and makes it more convenient to copy the forms
    to external pages.
  - cgi_error_disabled(): Use status code 403 and an appropriate response line
  - Use a dedicated CGI handler to deal with tag-toggle requests
    As a result the /client-tags page is now safe to reach without
    trusted Referer header which makes bookmarking or linking to
    it more convenient.
    Finally, refreshing the /client-tags page to show the
    current state can no longer unintentionally repeat the
    previous toggle request.
  - Don't add a "Connection" header for CONNECT requests.
    Explicitly sending "Connection: close" is not necessary and
    apparently it causes problems with some forwarding proxies
    that will close the connection prematurely.
    Reported by Marc Thomas.
  - Fix compiler warnings.

- Bug fixes:
  - rfc2553_connect_to(): Properly detect and log when poll()
    reached the time out. Previously this was logged as:
    Could not connect to [...]: No error: 0.
    which isn't very helpful.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - add_tag_for_client(): Set time_to_live properly.
    Previously the time_to_live was always set for the first tag.
    Attempts to temporarily enable a tag would result in enabling
    it permanently unless no tag was enabled already.
  - Revert r1.165 which didn't perform as advertised.
    While the idea was to use "https:// when creating links
    for the user manual on the website", the actual effect
    was to use "https://" when Privoxy was supposed to serve
    the user manual itself.
    Reported by Yossi Zahn on Privoxy-devel@.
  - socks5_connect(): Fail in case of unsupported address types.
    Previously they would not be detected right away and
    Privoxy would fail later on with an error message that
    didn't make it obvious that the problem was socks-related.
    So far, no such problems have actually been reported.
  - socks5_connect(): Properly deal with socks replies that
    contain IPv6 addresses.
    Previously parts of the reply were left unread and
    later on treated as invalid HTTP response data.
    Fixes #904 reported by Danny Goossen who also provided
    the initial version of this patch.

- Action file improvements:
  - Unblock 'msdn.microsoft.com/'.
    It (presumably) isn't used to serve the kind of ads Privoxy should
    block by default but happens to serve lots of pages with URLs that
    are likely to result in false positives.
    Reported by bugreporter1694 in AF#939.
  - Disable gif deanimation for requests tagged with CSS-REQUEST.
    The action will ignore content that isn't considered text
    anyway and explicitly disabling it makes this more obvious
    if "action" debugging (debug 65536) is enabled while
    "gif deanimation" debugging (debug 256) isn't.
  - Explicitly disable HTML filters for requests with CSS-REQUEST tag.
    The filters are unlikely to break CSS files but executing
    them without (intentionally) getting any hits is a waste of
    cpu time and makes the log more noisy when running with
    "debug 64".
  - Unblock 'adventofcode.com/'.
    Reported by Clint Adams in Debian bug #848211.
    Fixes Roland's AF#937.
  - Unblock 'adlibris.com'.
    Reported by Wyrex in #935
  - Unblock .golang.org/
  - Add fast-redirects exception for '.youtube.com/.*origin=http'

- Privoxy-Log-Parser:
  - Don't gather host and resource statistics if they aren't requested.
    While the performance impact seems negligible this significantly
    reduces the memory usage if there are lots of requests.
  - Bump version as the behaviour (slightly) changed.
  - Count connection failures as well in statistics mode.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Count connection timeouts as well in statistics mode.
    Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
  - Fix an 'uninitialized value' warning when generating
    statistics for a log file without response headers.
    While privoxy-log-parser was supposed to detect this already,
    the check was flawed and the message the user didn't see was
    somewhat confusing anyway.
    Now the message is less confusing, more helpful and actually printed.
    Reported by: Robert Klemme

- Documentation improvements:
  - Refer to the git sources instead of CVS.
  - Use GNU/Linux when referring to the OS instead of the kernel.
  - Add FAQ entry for what to do if editing the config file is access denied.
  - Add brief HTTP/2 FAQ.
  - Add a small fuzzing section to the developer documentation.
  - Add a client-header-tagger{client-ip-address} example.
  - Stop suggesting that Privoxy is an anonymizing proxy.
    The term could lead to Privoxy users overestimating
    what it can do on its own (without Tor).
  - Make it more obvious that SPI accepts Paypal, too.
    Currently most donations are made through the Paypal account
    managed by Zwiebelfreunde e.V. and a more even distribution
    would be useful.
  - Suggest to log applying actions as well when reproducing problems.
  - Explicitly mention that Privoxy binaries are built by individuals
    on their own systems. Buyer beware!
  - Mention the release feed on the homepage.
  - Remove a mysterious comment with a GNU FDL link as it isn't
    useful and could confuse license scanners.
    In May 2002 it was briefly claimed that "this document" was covered
    by the GNU FDL. The commit message (r1.5) doesn't explain the motivation
    or whether all copyright holders were actually asked and agreed to the
    declared license change.
    It's thus hard to tell whether or not the license change was legit,
    but luckily two days later the "doc license" was "put" "back to GPL"
    anyway (r1.6).
    At the same time the offending comment with a link to the FDL
    (not the GPL) was added for no obvious reason.
    Now it's gone again.

- Regression tests:
  - Bump for-privoxy-version to 3.0.27 as we now rely on untrusted
    CGI request being rejected with status code 403 (instead of 200).
  - Update test for /send-stylesheet and add another one

- Templates:
  - Consistently use https:// when linking to the Privoxy website.
  - Remove SourceForge references in Copyright header.
  - Remove a couple of SourceForge references in a comment.
    While at it, fix the grammar.
  - Move the site-specific documentation block before the generic one.
    While most Privoxy installations don't have a site-specific
    documentation block, in cases were it exists it's likely to
    be more relevant than the generic one.
    Showing it first makes it less likely that users stop reading
    before they reach it, especially on pages that don't fit on
    the screen.

- Build system improvements:
  - Prefer openjade to jade. On some systems Jade produces
    HTML with unescaped ampersands in URLs.
  - Prefer OpenSP to SP to be consistent.
  - Have Docbook generated HTML files be straight ASCII.
    Dealing with a mixture of ISO-8859 and UTF-8 files is problematic.
  - Echo the filename to stderr for 'make dok-tidy'.
    Make it a bit easier to find errors in docbook generated HTML.
  - Warn when still using select().
  - Warn when compiling without calloc().
  - Make it more obvious that the --with-fdsetsize configure switch
    is pointless if poll() is available.
  - Remove support for AmigaOS.
  - Update windows build system to use supported software.
    The cygwin gcc -mno-cygwin option is no longer supported, so
    convert the windows build system to use the cygwin cross-compiler
    to build "native" code.
  - Add --enable-static-linking option for configure
    does the same thing as LDFLAGS=-static; ./configure
    but nicer than mixing evars and configure options.

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About Privoxy:
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Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for
enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling
access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a
flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and
tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user
networks.

Privoxy is Free Software and licensed under the GNU GPLv2.

Our TODO list is rather long. Helping hands and donations are welcome:

  * https://www.privoxy.org/faq/general.html#PARTICIPATE

  * https://www.privoxy.org/faq/general.html#DONATE

At present, Privoxy is known to run on Windows 95 and later versions
(98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7 etc.), GNU/Linux (RedHat, SuSE,
Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware and others), Mac OS X (10.4 and
upwards on PPC and Intel processors), OS/2, Haiku, DragonFly, ElectroBSD,
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and various other flavors of Unix.

In addition to the core features of ad blocking and cookie management,
Privoxy provides many supplemental features, that give the end-user
more control, more privacy and more freedom:

  *  Supports "Connection: keep-alive". Outgoing connections can be kept
     alive independently from the client. Currently not available on all
     platforms.

  *  Supports IPv6, provided the operating system does so too,
     and the configure script detects it.

  *  Supports tagging which allows to change the behaviour based on client
     and server headers.

  *  Can be run as an "intercepting" proxy, which obviates the need to
     configure browsers individually.

  *  Sophisticated actions and filters for manipulating both server and
     client headers.

  *  Can be chained with other proxies.

  *  Integrated browser based configuration and control utility at
     http://config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/). Browser-based
     tracing of rule and filter effects. Remote toggling.

  *  Web page filtering (text replacements, removes banners based on size,
     invisible "web-bugs" and HTML annoyances, etc.)

  *  Modularized configuration that allows for standard settings and user
     settings to reside in separate files, so that installing updated actions
     files won't overwrite individual user settings.

  *  Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration
     files, and a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax.

  *  GIF de-animation.

  *  Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).

  *  User-customizable HTML templates for most proxy-generated pages (e.g.
     "blocked" page).

  *  Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
    
  *  Most features are controllable on a per-site or per-location basis.


Home Page: 
   https://www.privoxy.org/

  - Privoxy Developers <privoxy-devel@lists.privoxy.org>