Pure Python Salsa20 Stream Cipher Implementation

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:34:30 -0200, <betabrain.honshu at gmail.com> escribió:
> On 8 Feb., 17:18, Paul Rubin <http://phr...@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:

>> I don't understand why a pure python version of salsa20 would be
>> interesting.  Is there some application that uses salsa20, that's
>> worth being able to interoperate with in pure python?
>
> The reason for a pure python is that it would be independent from the
> platform. A C implementation is faster, but you need to compile it for
> every platform. A python implementation doesn't have that problem and
> could be used to fall back upon.

On most platforms -with a notable exception- there is a C compiler  
available as a standard tool, which is used to compile Python itself.
distutils can easily compile and install C extensions itself, so most of  
the time "python setup.py install" is the only thing users have to  
execute, exactly the same as if the package were pure Python. With  
setuptools, things may be even easier.

I'm not saying that there is no merit in having a Python implementation,  
just that -as Paul Rubin pointed out- the *need* for such thing is not too  
high.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina