remove proxy support

[charles]

Our proxy support is not very good -- we only support tracker proxies, not peer ones -- and few people have seemed to mind or even notice.

If the lesson here is that few people use proxies, we should remove the feature as bloat.

If the lesson here is that our proxy support isn't good enough, then we should still remove the feature and replace it with something better.

Moreover, removing proxies and listening to the user feedback will answer the question of which of these lessons is correct. ;)

[charles]

removed from GTK+ GUI in r11358

[kovalev]

On my opinion, supporting communication via proxy (at least at the tracker level) is vital to the usability of any BitTorrent? application - unless there is another better anonymizing tool built-in in it. Many ISPs nowadays are manipulating bittorrent traffic pretending they fight piracy in such a way. Tracker proxy support can protect at least against some simple traffic analyzers, and that's better than nothing at all. Legal issues associated to traffic anonymizing/encryption - that's another matter...

The absence of bug reports concerning tracker proxy may simply mean that it works. :) Even using Transmission from time to time to receive distribution upgrades I personally would prefer to keep the feature alive. Or to build my own version of Transmission with a piece of old code - fortunately, in open source projects the source code is usually available. :)

P.S. In concern to bloating "Preferences" - indeed, "Privacy" and "Proxy" seem fall naturally to the same category. Putting the options in their present state to the same tab would not produce an excessive clutter imho.

[felciano]

There are regular questions about proxy support on the forums, which suggests there is user demand for it (including more than just tracker-based support):

​https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3702&p=32695&hilit=btguard#p36812 ​https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7552&p=36778&hilit=btguard#p36778 ​https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10142&p=47413&hilit=btguard#p47413

[livings124]

r11364 for the Mac client

[charles]

r11367 for libtransmission

[User294]

As for me, any decent networking desktop application should support proxy. For me this will allow to use Transmission in more scenarios and sometimes this could save a day. Most of other popular clients support proxies. Sure, not everyone needs proxy each and every day, and running torrent via proxy is suboptimal. But look, not everyone needs firefighters every day, too. Yet firefighters are here and it's nice if they arrive to right place at right time.

[charles]

r11379 for Qt client

[clu]

I spent half an hour trying to debug proxy settings only to finally find this.

"If the lesson here is that our proxy support isn't good enough, then we should still remove the feature and replace it with something better."

Some proxy support is better than nothing at all. This was also the worst possible way to go about working on proxy improvement.

[patg]

This is a make-or-break feature for anyone behind oppressive firewalls. I will continue using the old version until this feature returns. I complained on the irc but no one cared. In the future, please don't remove features without some type of warning -or shame on me for not carefully reading the release notes. Also, please bring back a default blocklist. I want my favorite bt client to get better over time, not worse. I'm sorry charles doesn't use this particular feature but jeez to remove it entirely without warning? Just leave the feature until you have something to replace it, or take a poll or something. This was careless. I'm very upset.

[x777]

Please revert this "enhancement". Proxy support was good enough. Actually, proxy for trackers was all I needed. I was always using latest versions and from now on I will have to stick with 2.11 until proxy support is back, sad :(

[judgegator]

One more request to undo this "enhancement" I can't use version2.12. My ISP closes my connection if I don't use a proxy. I must remain at 2.11 for now. I'm hopeful that in future versions this will return. Improve it if need be, but please don't remove it again.

[garrych]

Bring back proxy settings for tracker announce, please. This is nice and useful feature, why remove it?

[lyosha]

It is rather unfortunate that proxy support is removed (so unfortunate I had to create an account to post this comment). It's been working very well for me, now I have to figure out how to use tsocks or how to backport the proxy change... I do hope it will be brought back.

[norenore]

If few people, as stated by charles, have taken the time and effort to complain, why would it be assumed that the majority finds this situation dissatisfactory? It's just not rational to assume that an admittedly small minority speaks for the entire user base on either, (a) what proxy support should entail (i.e. support forwarding of all P2P traffic), or (b) whether or not proxy support is used and in what volumes it is used.

Furthermore, even if charles' assumptions were valid, his reaction to them is inexplicably rash. Removal of a feature in lieu of the fact that a better theoretical implementation exists makes no sense at all. Should we ban internal combustion engines until someone comes up with a clean car? Of course not. The removal of a feature that a potentially huge number of people rely on without providing any solution is incredibly stupid. A flawed solution is still better than no solution. I'm sure the devs are aware of this fact, which leads me to believe that it was removed as bloat, and to determine that something is bloat based on one person's flawed assessment of its usage rate is also incredibly stupid.

[btuser732586019]

The only reason I created an account here was to request that the tracker proxy support be restored. Please do not remove features without stating clearly in the release notes that you did so, and include your justifications. The only reason I can think of for removing this code would be due to a security vulnerability (in which case you should fix it) or that the functionality was superseded by something else (in which case you should mention how users of the previous version can achieve the same effect).

[johndoe32102002]

Please reinstate proxy support, even though the support was limited. Many users will now view Transmission as trash if they can not use it. Please restore proxy support!

[johndoe32102002]

It is worth mentioning there is a duplicate of this ticket cross-website on the forum (20 posts and counting demanding Proxy Support): ​https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10864&hilit=proxy

[charles]

Followup ticket: #3817

[sinanimam]

In many countries like mine (Turkey), some trackers are blocked. I could use a proxy for just the tracker and everything would work, now I cannot use Transmission at all..

[zhulik]

In Russia, many popular trackes is blocked today. Proxy support is very important for us!

5 years have passed since proxy support is removed from transmission. Any way to add it back now?