Subject: Re: [bug#28004] Chromium

From: Marius Bakke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2018 18:28:46 +0100

Mike Gerwitz <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 19:18:39 +0100, Marius Bakke wrote:
>> Now, when launching the browser for the first time, it *still* connects
>> to Google services.  After a while it also does a lookup for AdWords...
>
> Do you know what code initiates this?  Would it be easy to remove, and
> would that harm other functionality?

Unfortunately, I don't know what triggers it.  Feel free to try picking
some of the other Inox patches and see if it makes a difference:

https://github.com/gcarq/inox-patchset

Inox goes great lengths to "ungooglify" the browser.  I've decided
against picking *all* their patches, for two reasons:

1) I'd like users to be able to use Chromium with their Google account
if they wish to (although I haven't actually tested this), and more
importantly:

2) More patches means more porting work every new release.  Usually
major versions bumps come with a plethora of security fixes, so I wish
to minimize maintenance overhead.  Just figuring out the changed
dependencies, build flags, and GCC bugs with every release is a lot of
work already.

> Saying that it only runs the first time implies to me that there's a
> flag, and that perhaps the flag can either be permanently set or the
> conditional triggering this behavior removed.

Indeed.  Any help figuring out the offender is very welcome!  No external
connectivity in the default configuration is a goal we should strive for.