Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 00:05:52 +0100
From: Ulf Moeller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Thu, Feb 22, 2001, Lenny Foner wrote:
> It just boggles my mind that OpenSSL is somehow so special that it
> can't use the same system used by hundreds of other packages.
The OpenSSL readme explains quite clearly that patches are welcome and
how they are best submitted. What are you all whining about, really?
Because every time someone has brought up autoconf/automake, the
strong impression received was that such patches would not be
integrated into the development stream. After all, it was the topic
of considerable debate only three (3) months ago, and, while my
general impression was that the dev team was looking more favorably
upon doing so now than, say, a year or two ago, no actual closure took
place in that discussion. Hence, it seemed that anyone who actually
spent the time to make this change and submit a patch might be wasting
their time.
If this is no longer the case, and it is asserted by someone(s) with
control of the source that a working (by whatever metric) set of
patches that implements the use of autoconf/automake would not be a
waste of time to submit, -then- I expect we'll see some action on
this.
Is this now the case? Who says yes, who says no, and how many of the
above have the authority to patch the current mainline?
Other points:
o It would be very interesting to examine how many other packages
which use OpenSSL are themselves using autoconf/automake. It's
conceivable that having OpenSSL use autoconf could simplify those
packages considerably. After all, the reasons I made SSLeay and SCM
use autoconf/automake were (a) making them more portable, and (b)
using other components, from other places, which already used
automake/autoconf, compatible with them. Thus, instead of having
one build procedure for SSLeay, one for SCM, one for the autoconfed
packages, and then one that took all of the above and tried to link
them into one binary, I merely had one: "./configure; make'.
o Anyone who thinks that my existing autoconf/automake patches to SSLeay
0.8.1 would be helpful in doing this job are more than welcome to them
If I get more than a single request, I will make them available on my
site and send a pointer to them to the list, and to the BXA so that it
may be verified that export control notification has occurred. (This
would probably be via a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]; I wonder if the
README should be updated to point there, instead, so we have an
archive of such submissions.) I have not already done made these
patches available because there (used to be?) concern that the
OpenSSL code base not be polluted by contributions from the US, and
making them publicly available would make such an argument of
pollution likely. Again, it's my belief that this is now considered
a non-issue by the OpenSSL dev team, although I'd have to do a bit
of digging in the archives to actually find the mail. (Either
way--whether US contributions are disallowed or allowed---it should
be documented on the website and in the README.)
o Question Misc.5 of the FAQ still maintains that autoconf/automake
won't be used for OpenSSL. If this is no longer valid, it should
be changed. If it only becomes invalid after the changeover, then
this should be put on the list of things to do.
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