openssl/STATUS

  OpenSSL STATUS                           Last modified at
  ______________                           $Date: 1999/05/20 01:42:57 $

  DEVELOPMENT STATE

    o  OpenSSL 0.9.3:  Freezed... only bugfixes and cleanups allowed!
                       Proposed release date: Mon May 24th, 1999
                       Release manager: Ben Laurie <ben@openssl.org>
                       !! Important: Any non-bugfix, non-cleanup
                       !! and non-documentation commits should
                       !! be approved by Ben, first.

    o  OpenSSL 0.9.2b: Released on March    22th, 1999
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.1c: Released on December 23th, 1998

  RELEASE SHOWSTOPPERS

    o BSD/OS: assembler functions must not have leading underscores

  AVAILABLE PATCHES

    o OCSP (titchenert@certco.com) 
    o getenv in ca.c and x509_def.c (jaltman@watsun.cc.columbia.edu)

  IN PROGRESS

    o Steve is currently working on (in no particular order):
        Proper (or at least usable) certificate chain verification.
        Documentation on X509 V3 extension code.
	PKCS #8 and PKCS#5 v2.0 support.
	Private key, certificate and CRL API and implementation.
	Checking and bugfixing PKCS#7 (S/MIME code).

    o Mark is currently working on:
        Folding in any changes that are in the C2Net code base that were
        not in the original SSLeay-0.9.1.b release.  Plus other minor
        tidying.

    o Ralf is currently working on:
        1. Support for SSL_set_default_verify_paths(),
           SSL_load_verify_locations(), SSL_get_cert_store() and
           SSL_set_cert_store() functions which work like their existing
           SSL_CTX_xxx() variants but on a per connection basis. That's needed
           to let us provide full-featured per-URL client verification in
           mod_ssl or Apache-SSL.
           => It still dumps core, so I suspend this and investigate
              again for OpenSSL 0.9.3.
        2. The perl/ stuff to make it really work the first time ;-)
           => I'll investigate a few more hours for OpenSSL 0.9.2
        3. The new documentation set in POD format under doc/
           => I'll investigate a few more hours for OpenSSL 0.9.2
        4. More cleanups to get rid of obsolete/old/ugly files in the
           source tree which are not really needed.
           => Done all which were possible with my personal knowledge

    o Ben is currently working on:
	1. Function Prototype Thought Police issues.
	2. Integrated documentation.
	3. New TLS Ciphersuites.
	4. Anything else that takes his fancy.

  NEEDS PATCH

    o  broken demos
    o  salzr@certco.com (Rich Salz): Bug in X509_name_print
       <29E0A6D39ABED111A36000A0C99609CA2C2BA4@macertco-srv1.ma.certco.com>
    o  [ Compilation warnings: ctype-related int vs. char ]
       => now casts (unsigned char), maybe those arrays should have
          members of that type rather than plain char (i.e.
          unsigned char *p; ....; if (isspace(*p)) ...; where it's now
          char *p; ....; if (isspace((unsigned char)*p)) ...;)
    o  $(PERL) in */Makefile.ssl
    o  "Sign the certificate?" - "n" creates empty certificate file
    o  dubious declaration of crypt() in des.h

  OPEN ISSUES

    o  The Makefile hierarchy and build mechanism is still not a round thing:

       1. The config vs. Configure scripts
          It's the same nasty situation as for Apache with APACI vs.
          src/Configure. It confuses.
          Suggestion: Merge Configure and config into a single configure
                      script with a Autoconf style interface ;-) and remove
                      Configure and config. Or even let us use GNU Autoconf
                      itself. Then we can avoid a lot of those platform checks
                      which are currently in Configure.

    o  Support for Shared Libraries has to be added at least
       for the major Unix platforms. The details we can rip from the stuff
       Ralf has done for the Apache src/Configure script. Ben wants the
       solution to be really simple.

       Status: Ralf will look how we can easily incorporate the
               compiler PIC and linker DSO flags from Apache
               into the OpenSSL Configure script.

    o  The perl/ stuff needs a major overhaul. Currently it's
       totally obsolete. Either we clean it up and enhance it to be up-to-date
       with the C code or we also could replace it with the really nice
       Net::SSLeay package we can find under
       http://www.neuronio.pt/SSLeay.pm.html.  Ralf uses this package for a
       longer time and it works fine and is a nice Perl module. Best would be
       to convince the author to work for the OpenSSL project and create a
       Net::OpenSSL or Crypt::OpenSSL package out of it and maintains it for
       us.

       Status: Ralf thinks we should both contact the author of Net::SSLeay
               and look how much effort it is to bring Eric's perl/ stuff up
               to date.
               Paul +1

    o The EVP and ASN1 stuff is a mess. Currently you have one EVP_CIPHER
      structure for each cipher. This may make sense for things like DES but
      for variable length ciphers like RC2 and RC4 it is NBG. Need a way to
      use the EVP interface and set up the cipher parameters. The ASN1 stuff
      is also foo wrt ciphers whose AlgorithmIdentifier has more than just
      an IV in it (e.g. RC2, RC5). This also means that EVP_Seal and EVP_Open
      don't work unless the key length matches the fixed value (some vendors
      use a key length decided by the size of the RSA encrypted key and expect
      RC2 to adapt).

    o Properly initialize the PRNG in the absence of /dev/random.

    o ERR_error_string(..., buf) does not know how large buf is,
      there should be ERR_error_string_n(..., buf, bufsize)
      or similar.

  WISHES

    o  Mats Nilsson <mats.nilsson@xware.se>:
       "Add reference counting to all substructures of X509 etc. For instance,
       X509_NAME lacks a reference counter, while EVP_PKEY has one.  I'm
       making COM-wrappers for selected parts of SSLeay for a project of ours,
       and has found this inconsistency in copy semantics annoying."