2 OpenSSL STATUS Last modified at
3 ______________ $Date: 1999/02/20 16:50:53 $
7 o OpenSSL 0.9.2: Still under development.
8 Proposed freeze time: Monday, March 8th 1999
9 Proposed release time: Monday, March 15th 1999
10 o OpenSSL 0.9.1c: Released on December 23th, 1998
18 o Steve is currently working on:
19 X509 V3 extension code including:
20 1. Support for the more common PKIX extensions.
21 2. Proper (or at least usable) certificate chain verification.
22 3. Support in standard applications (req, x509, ca).
23 4. Documentation on how all the above works.
24 Next on the list is probably PKCS#12 integration.
26 o Mark is currently working on:
27 Folding in any changes that are in the C2Net code base that were
28 not in the original SSLeay-0.9.1.b release. Plus other minor
31 o Ralf is currently working on:
32 1. Support for SSL_set_default_verify_paths(),
33 SSL_load_verify_locations(), SSL_get_cert_store() and
34 SSL_set_cert_store() functions which work like their existing
35 SSL_CTX_xxx() variants but on a per connection basis. That's needed
36 to let us provide full-featured per-URL client verification in
37 mod_ssl or Apache-SSL.
38 2. The perl/ stuff to make it really work the first time ;-)
39 3. The new documentation set in PID format under doc/
40 4. More cleanups to get rid of obsolete/old/ugly files in the
41 source tree which are not really needed.
47 o The Makefile hierarchy and build mechanism is still not a round thing:
49 1. The config vs. Configure scripts
50 It's the same nasty situation as for Apache with APACI vs.
51 src/Configure. It confuses.
52 Suggestion: Merge Configure and config into a single configure
53 script with a Autoconf style interface ;-) and remove
54 Configure and config. Or even let us use GNU Autoconf
55 itself. Then we can avoid a lot of those platform checks
56 which are currently in Configure.
58 2. The xxx.org -> xxx.h generation:
59 It's not obvious for which file xxx.org is the source.
60 Suggestion: Rename xxx.org to xxx.h.in (Autoconf style), this way
61 one sees that xxx.h.in is the input for xxx.h
65 o The installation under "make install" produces a very
66 installation layout: $prefix/certs and $prefix/private dirs. That's
67 not nice. Ralf suggests to move the two certs and private dirs either
68 to $prefix/etc/, $prefix/lib/ or $prefix/share. Alternatively
69 we could also not install the certs at all.
71 Status: Ralf +1 for both not installing the certs at all and
72 moving it to $prefix/etc/. +0 for $prefix/lib/
74 Paul: why is it not nice?
75 Ralf: because it messes up the install dir when
76 $prefix is not a dedicated area like /usr/local/ssl.
77 When we move them to a standard subdir like
78 etc/ lib/ or share/ we don't mess up things
79 when $prefix is /usr or /usr/local, etc.
80 Additionally it makes package vendors life
83 o Support for Shared Libraries has to be added at least
84 for the major Unix platforms. The details we can rip from the stuff
85 Ralf has done for the Apache src/Configure script. Ben wants the
86 solution to be really simple.
88 Status: Ralf will look how we can easily incorporate the
89 compiler PIC and linker DSO flags from Apache
90 into the OpenSSL Configure script.
92 o The perl/ stuff needs a major overhaul. Currently it's
93 totally obsolete. Either we clean it up and enhance it to be up-to-date
94 with the C code or we also could replace it with the really nice
95 Net::SSLeay package we can find under
96 http://www.neuronio.pt/SSLeay.pm.html. Ralf uses this package for a
97 longer time and it works fine and is a nice Perl module. Best would be
98 to convince the author to work for the OpenSSL project and create a
99 Net::OpenSSL or Crypt::OpenSSL package out of it and maintains it for
102 Status: Ralf thinks we should both contact the author of Net::SSLeay
103 and look how much effort it is to bring Eric's perl/ stuff up
107 o The EVP and ASN1 stuff is a mess. Currently you have one EVP_CIPHER
108 structure for each cipher. This may make sense for things like DES but
109 for variable length ciphers like RC2 and RC4 it is NBG. Need a way to
110 use the EVP interface and set up the cipher parameters. The ASN1 stuff
111 is also foo wrt ciphers whose AlgorithmIdentifier has more than just
112 an IV in it (e.g. RC2, RC5). This also means that EVP_Seal and EVP_Open
113 don't work unless the key length matches the fixed value (some vendors
114 use a key length decided by the size of the RSA encrypted key and expect
120 "How about making the each of the locations compile-time defined. I
121 would like to (for example) put binaries in /usr/bin, configuration
122 data, certs and keys in /etc/openssl/certs and /etc/openssl/keys, etc.
123 This would also be a great boon to binary package makers. The
124 SSLeay-0.9.1b RPM already includes some patches which do some of this.
125 I can forward them if you wish."