[Development] Setting a Minimum Support OpenSSL Version

Richard Moore rich at kde.org
Tue Apr 16 13:19:39 CEST 2013


Currently, the ssl support in Qt aims to support a wide range of
openssl version but the actual set isn't really defined. The platforms
vary too - windows doesn't bundle openssl so users are expected to add
their own, linux generally has a reasonably modern version, macos
includes openssl but only a really old version with a macos ports
version being required for anything recent. On macos the library is
deprecated too, so we can't expect apple to actually update it. We
can't really continue like this, I think it's clear that we need to
set a minimum support version, the only question is which?

1) We could say we'll set the minimum to the version macos bundles.

Since openssl has been deprecated on mac, this version would have the
advantage of providing a fixed target, but it will get increasingly
difficult to support. I would also not be surprised should it be
removed from the platform fairly soon since it's largely been replaced
by a mac specific library. Personally, I'm not going to waste my time
on a version this old, but if there's demand then maybe someone else
will.

2) We could say 1.0.0 is the minimum.

This would have the advantage of setting an easily recognisable
boundary. 1.0.0 has a pretty well defined feature set so we'd have
something solid to work with. The downside would be that we'd now be
requiring that macos developers use macos ports to get a version of
openssl that works properly, users of long term support versions of
linux such as rhel would be in a similar position.

3) We could pick another version as a minimum.

This would have to be based on the versions used by the various long
term supported distributions such as rhel, suse enterprise etc.

4) Your idea here.

Have a better idea? Please describe it.

Cheers

Rich.



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