cryptoadvance / cryptoadvance/specter-desktop
Reduce the download size by replacing the Tor Binaries
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 847
- Forks
- 259
- Avg merge
- 6d 18h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 2
Description
Currently, the Binaries, especially for Linux and MacOS is unreasonably huge.

This increases initial startup time but also each time you start specter as the binary need to be unpacked.
The reason are the Tor binaries which are bloated and could be much smaller. Unfortunately, Tor does not release reasonable binaries for the different platforms and what people do is to extract those binaries from bigger packages which to is releasing.
E.g. Mercury Wallet has much smaller binaries here:
https://github.com/layer2tech/mercury-wallet/tree/master/resources
Contributor guide
Research direction
The issue names no repository files or tests. Start by locating the packaged Tor binaries and the startup path that unpacks them, then compare the smaller platform binaries in Mercury Wallet's resources. Done means reducing the Linux and macOS download size while preserving Tor startup behavior.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- desktop, performance
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100