deraadt> > Thing is, that man page is not just about those functions, it's the
deraadt> > general description on how error codes work in OpenSSL, even how to
deraadt> > extend OpenSSL itself if you want to.
deraadt>
deraadt> I disagree. I think that the name that shows up in the top banner of
deraadt> a man page is of no consequence, as long as there are no extra section
deraadt> 3 man pages for things which "do not exist", or "which conflict with
deraadt> system provided routines".
I agree that section 3 is a poor placement for things that aren't
existing functions. Those should at least be moved elsewhere.
deraadt> Well, in this case I think you forgot that err(3) is a man
deraadt> page in a BSD system. But rand(3) is similar.
Rather, we didn't know. Also, so far, the installations have been in
/usr/local/ssl, and we've left it to the users to set their $MANPATH
right. It may be time to rethink that position :-).
deraadt> stdio(3) man page -- I'm going to see about getting rid of that, since
deraadt> there is no stdio function or variable. Gotta clean our own house at
deraadt> the same time).
:-)
deraadt> > So, since that page is about OpenSSL error codes and the handling of
deraadt> > them, rather than just a description of the functions you use, it's
deraadt> > slightly odd to have it function-based. Therefore, openssl_err is
deraadt> > actually a good idea.
deraadt>
deraadt> But it is not odd to have things function based! Regular manual pages
deraadt> have been oriented that way for a very long time.
Correction: man pages in section 2 and 3 :-)
deraadt> I have no problem with a section 7 man page, except that
deraadt> there really is no need to force a programmer to read two man
deraadt> pages at the same time. All the issues which relate to
deraadt> openssl errors are really pretty much the same topic that a
deraadt> researcher of ERR_whatever would be searching for. So, I
deraadt> think that a section 7 man page is excessive; why not
deraadt> carefully put all the related
Hmm, two different worlds. The ultimate consequence of what you've
said so far is that all ERR-related things should really be in one
page and one page only. I personalyl really dislike to have to sift
through a humongous man page just to find the little bit of info I
need. At the same time, the lack of some general index when I'm
looking for some functionality tends to drive me up the wall.
Mind you, I'm not the one who wrote the pages we have in OpenSSL, but
apparently, I'm not the only one thinking the way I do :-).
deraadt> I have no idea what to do about those. We don't even install the
deraadt> extra commands yet (just openssl(1) so far) -- as they are now their
I see another humongous man page coming.... eeep...
deraadt> build a scaffolding containing multiple commands in one. I do not
deraadt> think you're going to convince a lot of Unix vendors to ship with all
deraadt> those commands in /usr/bin.
Uhmm, if you have looked at OpenSSL, you'll know there's only one
program really, called "openssl", and the commands described in all
those man pages are really subcommands to "openssl"...
--
Richard Levitte \ Spannv�gen 38, II \ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chairman@Stacken \ S-168 35 BROMMA \ T: +46-8-26 52 47
Redakteur@Stacken \ SWEDEN \ or +46-708-26 53 44
Procurator Odiosus Ex Infernis -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Member of the OpenSSL development team
Unsolicited commercial email is subject to an archival fee of $400.
See <http://www.stacken.kth.se/~levitte/mail/> for more info.
______________________________________________________________________
OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org
Development Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
