Back on 13 May 2016 I had
proposed by email to a couple of people including Rich Salz
a third library level (on top of
crypto and ssl) with more high-level, application-oriented code.
His response was:
That is a really interesting idea. Please bring this up on openssl-dev mailing list.
Then I posted that by mistake unfortunately not in the right
forum but at:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mailing.openssl.dev/FOL2afc3cb8
I quote my post here for convenience:
So far, the OpenSSL code has essentially
a three-level structure with a hierarchy of two libraries and
a command-line application at the top:
apps/openssl
libssl
libcrypto
In the apps/ directory there is various generally useful code
like handling crypto-related files and messages, general TLS
client/server and CA functionality, implementing parts of
protocols like S/MIME, CRL, and OCSP, and certainly more to
come.
While this code serves as a model for using the libraries and
it can be used in a limited way by invoking the openssl
application binary, it cannot be re-used directly. Other
applications that need similar functionality need to
copy/re-implement and then maintain portions of that code.
On the other hand, the libraries contain some code that is
actually too high-level for them, for instance the minimal
HTTP client as part of the crypto library
(crypto/ocsp/ocsp_ht.c).
It would be very helpful to introduce a further level in the
hierarchy consisting of a more application-oriented library:
apps/openssl
libtlsapps <-- new (with tentative name here)
libssl
libcrypto
Then all more high-level and application support functionality
will go there. This would make much of the generally useful
code that so far resides in the apps/ folder directly
accessible to other
applications at the programming level, i.e., in the form of a
library/API, with all the re-usability advantages that this
brings. It would also relieve libcrypto from more
application-/high-level topics like HTTP.
This library would also form an ideal condensation point for
further high-level uses of TLS that may in the future get
integrated with OpenSSL, like CMP and EST implementations.
I recently learned that LibreSSL
already/meanwhile has something in this direction:
- libtls:
a new TLS library, designed to make it easier to write
foolproof applications
I believe this would be of great benefit also for OpenSSL
itself.
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