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Comment by Dunnorandom | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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