Hacker News Reader

Comment by martinknafve | Hacker News Reader

I'm unable to compile this on Win32 (I don't have any problems compiling older versions). I don't understand how the code could compile for anyone, maybe it's a platform specific issue. Take a look here on line 80:

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/master/crypto/cversi...

The variable cflags isn't defined. I suspect it should be CFLAGS. I can make it compile locally by changing that, and it would make the code in the function consistent with the other code in the same file.

I thought C defines were case sensitive on all platforms. Anyone knows better than me?

View on HN

You have to keep in mind that OpenSSL runs several Perl scripts as part of its build process. And it's one of these scripts that generates a header which defines the cflags variable:

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/103b171d8fc282ef435f...

Apparently this is done to work around potential length limitations in C string literals.

I can compile the previous versions. I've used the same script for several years, and its not until this version today I have an issue. When seeing the issue, I actually tried compiling the old versions again and those still worked.

It would seem odd if they actually change the build process in a security patch, right? The instructions on how to build OpenSSL on Windows has not been changed in 2 years.

> It would seem odd if they actually change the build process in a security patch, right?

No release of OpenSSL has ever been "the previous release plus the minimal patches for a security fix". This isn't a security patch. It's a new release that happens to include some security patches.

It's a security patch in the sense that the only way to get the security patches is to install the new version.

But thanks for the info. That seems like a pretty bad practice when it comes to a lib such as OpenSSL. Having to do changes to the build process to integrate an urgent security fix seems less than optimal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com