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OONI Docs

OONI Probe Engine

OONI Probe Android

Table of Contents
  1. About this project
  2. Install instructions
  3. Nightly Builds
  4. Build instructions
  5. Contributing
  6. License
  7. Updating dependencies
  8. Releasing
  9. Semantic versioning policy

About this project

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is a non-profit free software project that aims to empower decentralized efforts in documenting Internet censorship around the world.

This repository contains the following Go packages:

  1. the ooniprobe command line client (cmd/ooniprobe);

  2. the test helper server (internal/cmd/oohelperd);

  3. the mobile library (pkg/oonimkall);

  4. the measurement-engine library (internal);

  5. the miniooni experimental command line client (internal/cmd/miniooni).

Every top-level directory in this repository contains an explanatory README file.

Install instructions

Follow the instructions at ooni.org/install/cli to install ooniprobe precompiled binaries for Windows, macOS, and Debian/Ubuntu. Once ooniprobe is installed, refer to the user guide.

Nightly builds

We publish nightly builds using the rolling release tag. These builds use the latest commit of the master branch.

Developer instructions

To setup development for this repository you need Go >= 1.15. The ./script/go.bash script will automatically download the expected version of Go mentioned in the GOVERSION file (i.e., go1.22.2) and use it for building.

You can also bypass ./script/go.bash and build ooniprobe manually using go build ... but, in such a case, note that:

  1. using an older version that the one mentioned in GOVERSION is definitely not recommended and may not even compile;

  2. using later versions should work as intended for core functionality but extra functionality may be disabled or not working as intended.

Here’s why: we rely on packages forked from the standard library; so, it is more robust to use the same version of Go from which we forked those packages from.

You will also need a C compiler. On Linux and other Unix systems both GCC and Clang will work. If you’re using Windows, we recommend installing Ubuntu or Debian on the Windows Subsystem for Linux. If you’re targeting Windows, you should also install the mingw-w64 cross-compiler.

Debian developer setup

The following commands show how to setup a development environment using Debian 12 (“bookworm”). The same instructions should also work for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Terminal window
# install the compilers, git, and the root CA
sudo apt install golang build-essential ca-certificates git


# [optional] install mingw-w64 if you're targeting windows
sudo apt install mingw-w64

Fedora developer setup

The following commands show how to setup a development environment using Fedora, as long as your Fedora uses Go >= 1.15.

Terminal window
# install the compilers and git
sudo dnf install golang make gcc gcc-c++ git


# [optional] install mingw-w64 if you're targeting windows
sudo dnf install mingw64-gcc mingw64-gcc-c++

macOS developer setup

The following commands show how to setup a development environment using macOS. We assume you have already installed Homebrew, which should also install the Xcode command line tools.

Then, you need to follow these instructions:

Terminal window
# install the compiler
brew install go

The ./script/go.bash script

The ./script/go.bash script requires Go >= 1.15 and automates installing and using the correct version of Go. Running this script as follows:

Terminal window
./script/go.bash build -v -ldflags '-s -w' ./internal/cmd/miniooni

Is equivalent to running these commands:

Terminal window
go install -v golang.org/dl/go1.22.2@latest
$HOME/go/bin/go1.22.2 download
export GOTOOLCHAIN=local
$HOME/sdk/go1.22.2/bin/go build -v -ldflags '-s -w' ./internal/cmd/miniooni

Common build targets

This section shows how to build using ./script/go.bash. If you want to bypass using this script, just run go instead of ./script/go.bash.

You can compile ooniprobe using:

Terminal window
./script/go.bash build -v -ldflags '-s -w' ./cmd/ooniprobe

This command will generate a stripped binary called ooniprobe in the toplevel directory.

Likewise, you can compile miniooni using:

Terminal window
./script/go.bash build -v -ldflags '-s -w' ./internal/cmd/miniooni

This command will generate a stripped binary called miniooni in the toplevel directory.

And oohelperd using:

Terminal window
./script/go.bash build -v -ldflags '-s -w' ./internal/cmd/oohelperd

This command will generate a stripped binary called oohelperd in the toplevel directory.

Contributing

Please, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later

Releasing

We build releases using Makefile, which requires GNU make. Run make help for detailed usage.

See also the relevant section of CONTRIBUTING.md.

Semantic versioning policy

The mobile library is a public package for technical reasons. Go mobile tools require a public package to build from. Yet, we don’t consider API breakages happening in such a package to be sufficient to bump our major version number. For us, the mobile library is just a mean to implement OONI Probe Android and OONI Probe iOS. We’ll only bump the major version number if we change ./cmd/ooniprobe’s CLI.