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Diffstat (limited to 'pow/README')
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diff --git a/pow/README b/pow/README deleted file mode 100644 index f234489e..00000000 --- a/pow/README +++ /dev/null @@ -1,50 +0,0 @@ -$Id$ - -This is a hacked version of the Python OpenSSL Wrappers (POW) package. -At some point I'll package up the changes and send them to the package -maintainer (if I can find him), but I want my changes under version -control while I'm hacking. - -POW is a nice package, although it appears not to have gotten much -attention recently. It's really two separate packages, one of which -uses a few facilities from the other: - -- POW itself is a Python extension module linked against OpenSSL. - This (or some equivilent package like M2Crypto) is necessary if one - wants to use the various crypto algorithms. - -- POW.pkix is a pure-Python module that builds on the base POW module - to support X509v3 extensions. This, to me, is the most interesting - thing about POW: it's the only X.509 package for Python I've seen - that has a reasonably complete mapping of X.509v3 into native Python - datatypes (M2Crypto, by comparision, only supports the text - representations provided by the extension drivers in the OpenSSL - libraries -- POW supports those too, but they're not as useful). - -=== - -At present the POW extension module does not build cleanly on 64-bit -Intel-based systems using the GNU tool chain (eg, Linux on 64-bit -hardware) due to a problem in the compilation tool chain. The details -are obscure and nasty, but the short version is that the 32-bit tool -chain supports building a .so file with static (.a) library as one of -the inputs, while the 64-bit tool chain does not; this problem is -compounded by a combination of the baroque OpenSSL build system and -the highly automated Python extension module build system. - -The (vile, temporary) workaround is to build everything with shared -libraries instead of static libraries and install a 3779-enabled set -of OpenSSL shared libraries in the system library directory so that -the Python extension module can find them. This is (sort of) ok if -you don't mind having the 3779-enabled OpenSSL libraries installed, -but as this code was intended to be self-contained without whacky -dependencies like this, it's not what I would wish. - -There is probably some set of kludges we can insert into the build -process (eg, a "ld -r" hack) to work around this, but we haven't taken -the time to figure out what it is yet. - -The test for whether your system has this problem is simple: try -running "make" in the top-level directory. If it blows up trying to -build the POW extension module, you have this problem; if nothing -obviously bad happens, you're (probably) ok. |