[Python-Dev] Supported versions of OpenSSL

[Ned Deily]

On Aug 29, 2016, at 22:59, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> The other thing I've been looking at is how well documented the
> process is for building with a custom OpenSSL instead of the system
> one, and as near as I can tell, it isn't documented at all - the top
> level README doesn't mention it, and because the compilation is
> handled by setup.py rather than directly by make, there's no configure
> option for it the way there is for "--with-system-expat",
> "--with-system-libmpdec" and "--with-system-ffi".

There is at least one open issue with a supplied patch to provide a --with-ssl configure option:

http://bugs.python.org/issue21541

The patch may need some freshening up.  There are also other open issues on configuring third-party libraries in general.

> By contrast (and assuming I understand the situation correctly), the
> Windows build is already set up around the assumption that you'll need
> to build OpenSSL yourself.
> 
> So, in addition to updating PEP 11 with guidelines for determining the
> OpenSSL constraints for each release, I think we'll also need a README
> update to cover building against a non-system OpenSSL.

For OS X, we can copy the info about building with OpenSSL from Homebrew or MacPorts from the Developer's Guide. There are other things that could be done. The OS X installer build knows how to build OpenSSL as well as other needed libs.  I'd like to refactor that to make those libs usable for non-installer builds.  I've also thought it would be nice to provide simpler configure options to use Homebrew, MaPorts, or build-your-own.  That's probably not going to happen in time for 3.6b1, though.

--
  Ned Deily
  nad at python.org -- []