lantern-client

Lantern App

Lantern APP is an app that uses the VpnService API to intercept and reroute all device traffic to the Lantern circumvention tool.

Feature: Replica Mobile

See docs/replica.md.

Acknowledgements

This application uses ringtone sounds from Mike Koenig available here and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Code Generation

This project includes various pieces of autogenerated code like protocol buffers and routes. All of this code can be generated by running make codegen or just make. Specific pieces of code can be generated per the below instructions.

Protocol Buffers

If you update the protocol buffer definitions in protos_shared, make sure to run make protos to update the generated dart code.

Note - you might see an error like Can't load Kernel binary: Invalid SDK hash.. It seems that one can ignore this.

Building and Releasing

Dependencies

All those dependencies must be in your PATH

• Java 11 or greater
• Android Studio
• Xcode
• Git
• Android NDK
  • NDK should be version 26.x, for example 26.0.10792818.
• Git LFS
  • more information in Usage
• Flutter (3.13.5)
• sentry-cli
  • This is used for uploading native debug symbols to Sentry
• gomobile
• json-server
  • Only necessary for testing Replica
• CMake 3.22.1
  • You can get this from Android SDK Manager

🚀 Setup Project:

• Install all prerequisites
• Run git submodule update --init --recursive
• Run git lfs install && git pull
• Go to the SDK MANAGER
• Select Android SDK
• Check the SDK from android 5.0(LOLLIPOP) up to the Latest Version at the moment.
• Go to SDK Tools and check the option Show Package Details
• On the Android SDK Build-Tools, check from: SDK 30 up to the latest at the moment. (is optional if you wish to add more SDK alternatives such as 27.0, 28 or 29).
• On the NDK(Side by side) check the latest version of 22.x (not anything newer)
• Make sure that you have the latest Android SDK Command-line Tools
• Finally select the following:
  • Android Emulator
  • Android SDK Platform-Tools
  • Google play APK Expansion Library
  • Google play Instant Development SDK
  • Google Play Licensing Library
  • Google Play Services
  • Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator (HAXM installer)
• Click on Apply and accept the Terms and Conditions.
• If you are opening Xcode first time open Xcode and install necessary components
• Lastly Flutter Doctor to confirm that your setup is correct and ready!

🤖 Running the project on Android

• make android-lib ANDROID_ARCH (you need to generated liblantern-all.aar containing the Go backend code in order for the project to compile.)
• flutter pub get
• flutter run --flavor prod

🍏 Running the project on iOS

• make build-framework (you need to generated Internalsdk.xcframework. containing the Go backend code in order for the project to compile.)
• flutter pub get
• flutter run --flavor prod

Note: If you're using an M1 or M2 chip, navigate to the ios folder and run arch -x86_64 pod install

Running on emulators

You can easily run emulators directly from the command line with the following:

• flutter devices
• flutter run -d ID --flavor prod

👩‍💻 Using Android Studio? No problem!

We've got you covered! If you prefer using Android Studio, we have already set up the configuration files for you. Just select the prod configuration and hit Run... Get ready to start digging! 😄🔍

You can build an emulator with ./scripts/run_avd.rb. Here's an example run: ./scripts/run_avd.rb --level=30 --abi=x86 --use_google_apis --window. You'll need Ruby >= 2.3 installed and colorize gem (i.e., gem install colorize).

Flutter Logging

The Flutter component uses logger package for logging. See home.dart#build() to know where it's configured.

During development, you'll notice a lot of GoLog-tagged code. Feel-free to comment that out during your flutter work. A sane terminal command (using pidcat) is pidcat org.getlantern.lantern -i GoLog -i System.out -w 3.

Building the InternalSdk (AKA Lantern Core) as a library

The core Lantern functionality is written in Go and lives in ./internalsdk. It is compiled from Go using Gomobile to an AAR file that

Android

For compiled code lives in ./android/app/libs and is called liblantern-ARCH.aar.

Package the AAR with make android-lib ANDROID_ARCH=all

IOS

For compiled code lives in ./ios/internalsdk/ and is called Internalsdk.xcframework.

Desktop

The desktop app lives under desktop .. To build the Go shared library on macOS:

make darwin ffigen

Then to run the Flutter app on macOS:

flutter run -d macOS

Testing against Lantern's staging servers

Package the AAR with make android-lib ANDROID_ARCH=all STAGING=true

Making Android debug builds (Not yet implemented on IOS)

To create a debug build of the full lantern mobile app:

make android-debug

To install on the default device:

make android-debug-install

or

make android-release-install

🚧 Making Staging Builds

To build mobile for staging, use the STAGING command line argument:

STAGING=true make android-debug android-install

This will build Flashlight with the same STAGING flag, which allows your client to use the staging pro-server instance instead of the production one.

🎉 Making Release Builds

IOS

Do this to make a release build:

 VERSION=x.x.x make ios-release

Note: Replace x.x.x with the version number of your release.

This will

• Set the version number in the info.plist file and increment the build number 1
• Upload the DSYM file to Sentry
• Open the build folder once the build is complete

Android

The Android app is distributed in two ways, as an APK for side-loaded installation and as an app bundle (aab) for distribution on the Google Play Store. The APKs are architecture specific whereas the app bundle contains all 4 architectures (arm and x86 in 32-bit and 64-bit variants).

Do this to make a release build:

• Make sure ./android/local.properties exists. If not, create it to look like this (Replace with your own values. Find flutter.sdk by running flutter doctor -v):

    ```
    sdk.dir=/Users/AwesomeLanternDev/Library/Android/sdk
    flutter.sdk=/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/flutter/3.3.4/flutter
    ```
  

• Download sentry-cli

  • Authenticate with these credentials by running sentry-cli login. You need this, else the Makefile task will fail

• Download this release keystore file and put it somewhere like /tmp/mykeystore,jks

• Replace ~/.gradle/gradle.properties with the values found here

  • Make sure to replace KEYSTORE_FILE with the location of your keystore (/tmp/mykeystore,jks in our case above)

• Run VERSION=<version here> make android-release ANDROID_ARCH=all

  • Or, DEVELOPMENT_MODE=true make android-release ANDROID_ARCH=all to enable "Development Mode" which has extra dev features like taking screenshots and dev settings.

Building release packages

Lantern Android release packages are built in CI. You can build installers for beta, for production, or for internal testing by varying the tag syntax. To build for production, you simply tag the current version on main with, for example:

git tag -a "lantern-7.0.0" -f -m "Tagging production release"

To build a beta, simply include "beta" in the tag, as in:

git tag -a "lantern-7.0.0-beta" -f -m "Tagging beta release"

Finally, to create an internal build, use "internal", as in:

git tag -a "lantern-7.0.0-internal" -f -m "Tagging internal release"

For all of the above, don't forget to push the tags:

git push --tags -f

You can then find all built binaries in the lantern-binaries repository.

To publish a release on Google Play, go to the Lantern App on the Google Play Console and create a new release using the app bundle.

Enabling Auto-Update for a Sideloaded Release

Just because something's been released to prod doesn't mean clients will auto-update, there's an additional step for that. The below will release the current production version to autoupdate. Please make sure the VERSION parameter matches the current production version.

GH_TOKEN=<token> VERSION=7.2.0 make release-autoupdate

You can obtain the GH_TOKEN for releasing auto-updates from 1Password.

Testing Auto-Update with release builds

Sometimes you may need to make a release build with an old version that is eligible for auto-update. You can do that by using the VERSION_CODE environment variable

APP=lantern VERSION_CODE=1 VERSION=1.0.0 make android-release

APKs

For side-loading, we currently only support a 32 bit ARM APK, which you can build like this:

SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release

You can actually omit ANDROID_ARCH since arm32 is the default:

SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release

To build APKs for individual architectures, you can run this:

ANDROID_ARCH=arm32 SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release
ANDROID_ARCH=arm64 SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release
ANDROID_ARCH=x86 SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release
ANDROID_ARCH=amd64 SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release

You can build APKs containing 32 and 64 bit versions of ARM and Intel respectively like this:

ANDROID_ARCH=arm SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release
ANDROID_ARCH=386 SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-release

Making app bundles

SECRETS_DIR=$PATH_TO_TOO_MANY_SECRETS VERSION=2.0.0-beta1 make android-bundle

Testing

Flutter

Unit Testing

• Run running Flutter unit tests run make test
• To run independent Flutter tests, go to the root of the project and type: flutter test test/my_folder_test.dart
  • in case that you need the code coverage just add the following argument: flutter test --coverage test/my_folder_test.dart

Integration Testing

You can run integration tests from the integration_test directory against a live app using the following steps:

1. Run the app with these additional run arguments --dart-define=driver=true --observatory-port 8888 --disable-service-auth-codes
2. Run the integration test as a dart application
3. When running tests in different locales, change const simulatedLocale = 'en_US'; in integration_test_contants.dart to the desired locale.
4. Go to SETTINGS view and then run change_language_test.dart.
5. All tests should start with testing device showing Chats tab.
6. Start by running test 1A.
7. A handful of tests have specific requirements, marked by a "Test requirements" comment at the start of the test:
   1. 6A_scan_QR_code_test needs another phone to do the QR scanning process with
   2. 6B_request_flow_test requires a message request to have just been received
   3. 6C_introductions_test requires the testing device/emulator to have received an introduction to another contact
   4. 17C_verify_contact_test requires the most recent message to have been shared in conversation with an unverified contact
8. We will have some duplicate screenshots in there - run python3 scripts/screenshot_generation_assets/remove_dups.py [your android-lantern-path]/screenshots/ to deduplicate.
9. To generate stitched landscape images for all screenshots in a given test folder, run python3 scripts/screenshot_generation_assets/merge_screenshots.py [your android-lantern-path]/screenshots/[a locale e.g. en_US]

This mechanism for running integration tests follows this article. Using this mechanism, you can modify and rerun the integration test without having to redeploy the application.

WARNING - when running with flutter driver enabled, the on-screen keyboard does not work.

WARNING - if you try to run an instance of the app using --observatory-port and you already have another instance running with that same observatory-port, the 2nd instance will hang on launch because flutter cannot bind to that port.

TODO: we need to automate the running of integration tests in a CI environment using Flutter driver.

NOTE ⚠ : Flutter driver is borderline maintained and clearly the expectation is to move to using integration_test. Here is a good depiction of related conversations.

Testing Replica

A few Replica tests run json-server to serve dummy data during tests instead of hitting an actual Replica instance. The tests should transparently setup and teardown the dummy server but you need to have json-server in your PATH.

Java/Kotlin

• For testing all android/app/src/test tests, run ./gradlew :app:test
• For testing all android/app/src/androidTest tests, run ./gradlew :app:connectedAndroidTest
• For testing a specific an androidTest test, easiest is to open that file in Android Studio and clicking on the green play button next to the test
• For testing the internalsdk package, run cd ./internalsdk && go test ./...

Unit Test Graph

If you wanna visualize the current percentage of code coverage you need to do the following steps.

1. On your terminal check if you have installed: lcov if not then install.
2. Go to on your terminal android-lantern/coverage and type: genhtml coverage/lcov.info -o coverage/html that will generate a nice html file with the code coverage of all your files.

Testing Google Play Payments

If you're trying to test Google Play Payments with a sideloaded build, you will need to satisfy one of the following conditions, otherwise you'll get an error saying "the item you requested is not available for purchase" when trying to purchase in-app.

A. Your login for the Google Play Store needs to be a License Tester for our account, as described here B. Alternately, you can also try to follow these steps to make sure that the build is known to Google, but this didn't work for me.

    Make sure to upload the signed APK to developer console.

    Make sure to install the signed APK on your device not launch the app in the debugger.

    Make sure to create a test account in your developer console.

    Setup you testing account
        Make sure to sign in your device with your test account.
        In a case of closed alpha/beta testing, make sure you have added your test account to selected testers group, you can do this on the page of management your alpha/beta version.
        In a case of closed alpha/beta testing, make sure your testing account have accepted participation in testing of this application via special invite link

    Make sure to create in app billing in your developer console and finally activate the item from the console!!! (this is the one that got me after fully following google's tutorial)

    Make sure to set VersionCode and VersionName in the manifest to be the same as the version in the developer console (Alpha, Beta or Production. Drafts does not work anymore). @alexgophermix answer worked for me.

Testing Freekassa Payments

You'd most probably wanna run this against Lantern's staging servers and turn on testing mode for Freekassa. Unfortunately in Freekassa, once you turn on Testing Mode, you can't switch back without affecting live payments. Ideally, contant Freekassa support to see how you can enable a separate testing mode. I'll just mention here some helpful notes while testing Freekassa before we went live with it.

• Building the Flashlight library (i.e., internalsdk) with make android-lib ANDROID_ARCH=all STAGING=true is tempting, but it's not gonna work since all staging proxies you'll use (i.e., fallback-* proxies did not work at all for me as of today <25-12-2022, soltzen>).

  • You'll need to do the incredibly-hacky approach of modifying this function LanternHttpClient:createProUrl:

    public static HttpUrl createProUrl(final String uri, final Map<String, String> params) {
        // final String url = String.format("http://localhost/pro%s", uri);
        final String url = String.format("https://api-staging.getiantem.org%s", uri);
        HttpUrl.Builder builder = HttpUrl.parse(url).newBuilder();
        if (params != null) {
            for (Map.Entry<String, String> param : params.entrySet()) {
                builder.addQueryParameter(param.getKey(), param.getValue());
            }
        }
        return builder.build();
    }
    

• You can debug pro-server-neu's staging instance (i.e., api-staging.getiantem.org) using a combination of log, telemetry and checking the staging Redis instance (see here for more info)

Running Appium tests locally

To run the Appium tests locally with a connected device, you need to follow a few steps:

1. Install appium with npm:

npm install -g appium

1. Install the necessary drivers:

appium driver install uiautomator2
appium driver install --source=npm appium-flutter-driver
appium driver install espresso

1. Generate a debug build with CI=true make android-debug ANDROID_ARCH=all ... CI needs to be set to true to enable the Flutter driver extension.

2. Modify local_config.json to specify the path of a debug build APK on your system, and change appium:udid to specify your device ID (you can get this from adb devices)

3. Make sure your device is connected to your computer and then run

cd appium_kotlin
./gradlew test

To run a specific test, you can do

./gradlew test --tests '*GooglePlay*'

Source Dump

Lantern Android source code is made available via source dump tarballs. To create one, run:

VERSION=2.0.0 make sourcedump

This will create a file lantern-android-sources-2.0.0.tar.gz.

This tarball deliberately excludes UI resources like images and localized strings. It also deliberately excludes 3rd party Java libraries from the libs folder.

The tarball does include vendored Go libraries, including all of the getlantern.org Go libraries. In this tarball, these are all licensed under the GPL as explained in LICENSING.md.

All embedded URL literals in the getlantern.org Go code are elided to make it harder for clones to build a working version of Lantern.

TODO: once we're confident these are working well, we should automate the upload of these to S3 and GitHub along with the upload of releases.

Known issues when building the project

Gradle could not start your build:

> Could not create service of type FileAccessTimeJournal using GradleUserHomeScopeServices.createFileAccessTimeJournal().
   > Timeout waiting to lock journal cache (/Users/<username>/.gradle/caches/journal-1). It is currently in use by another Gradle instance.

Restart your computer.

Android Studio tries to access proxy server If you're running Lantern when you start Android Studio, and then turn off Lantern, Android Studio will keep trying to access resources via the proxy (which is no longer running). To fix this, restart Android Studio.

VSCode configurations

If you like that VSCode start running the project without the need of be constantly typing the command.

• Create a folder on the root of your project named: .vscode
• Inside .vscode create a file named: launch.json
• Add the following inside launch.json

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
      {
      "name": "Debug",
      "program": "lib/main.dart",
      "request": "launch",
      "type": "dart",
      "flutterMode": "debug",
      "args": [
        "--no-sound-null-safety",
        "--flavor",
        "prod",
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Linting

This project is formatted and linted with ktlint using the ktlint-gradle plugin.

You can install the ktlint Intellij plugin for some support for linting within Android Studio.

Add Commit Hook

./gradlew addKtlintCheckGitPreCommitHook

This adds a pre commit hook that lints all staged files upon commit.

Manually Auto-format

./gradlew ktlintFormat

This auto-formats all Kotlin files in the project.

Manually Check

./gradlew ktlintCheck

This manually runs the linter against all Kotlin files in the project.

FAQ

Why is there a long-running notification?

We run Lantern as a foreground service so that it remains on and connected with our messaging server. Typical Android applications use Google Play Services for push notifications, so they don't have have to maintain this kind of connection themselves.

We can't use Google Play Services because:

• A lot of our users don't even have Google Play Services installed
• Google is blocked in a lot of placess
• Some people view using Google for delivering messages as a privacy issue