[Python-Dev] SSL support in _socket

[Guido van Rossum]

> Some symbols starting with 'RAND_*' are aparently missing from 
> OpenSSL on my notebook.

Yes, this has bitten me too.  It's apparently a relatively new API in
OpenSSL and the SSL code in socket.c was changed to require it almost
as soon as it appeared in OpenSSL.

> In summary: _socket is just too important to lose if something
> in the OpenSSL support goes wrong. The two build model I suggested
> fixes this problem elegantly and doesn't cost anything in
> terms of adding tons of code -- all we need is an #ifdef for
> the module name in _socketmodule.c

Since the SSL support mostly introduces new code that doesn't depend
on other socket code (not 100% sure if this is true), can't we make
the SSL support a separate module?  Then socket.py (which is also used
on Unix these days!!!) can glue them together.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)