[squid-dev] Contributing to Squid and Open-Source Forward Proxy in Kubernetes

[Alex Rousskov]

On 2025-02-12 17:22, Zile Rehman wrote:

> I’m Zile Rehman, a Platform Engineer at Orca Security. 
> Recently, I worked on a forward proxy solution in Kubernetes and found 
> that there are very few resources available in this area. My goal is to 
> create an open-source repository with a container image and clear 
> instructions that others can use as a forward proxy.
> 
> I’d love to get your guidance on how to get started with this initiative 
> and how I can contribute to the official Squid-Cache project.
> 
> Here’s my personal repository that I recently started: SquidFlow 
> <https://github.com/rehmanz/squidflow>. It’s still a work in progress, 
> and I plan to add more components soon.


Hello Zile Rehman,

     Welcome to the Squid Project! I am not an expert on containers, but 
many folks use containerized Squid. For example, Eliezer has been 
sharing his docker files for a while as he detailed at [1,2].

As for guidance, I would recommend clearly documenting what your 
container is for: "egress proxy" is too generic. This is especially 
important if the container allows all traffic! Disclosing target use 
case(s) would also help when asking configuration questions.

Also, please note that an "acl" directive does not "allow" (or denies) 
anything. Instead, it names and defines a _condition_ (that can be used 
by other directives for various purposes, including access control). You 
may want to adjust comments inside [3] and remove unused ACLs to avoid 
confusion. If you can improve existing "acl" directive documentation 
based on your experience, please submit a pull request!


[1] 
https://lists.squid-cache.org/pipermail/squid-users/2024-February/026480.html

[2] 
https://lists.squid-cache.org/pipermail/squid-users/2024-February/026446.html

[3] https://github.com/rehmanz/squidflow/blob/v2024.12.08/app/squid.conf


Cheers,

Alex.