Commit 2a8a10ed authored by Geoff Thorpe's avatar Geoff Thorpe
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Add notes about the new ENGINE functionality.

parent f11bc840
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+37 −1
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -11,13 +11,49 @@
         *) applies to 0.9.6a (/0.9.6b) and 0.9.7
         +) applies to 0.9.7 only

  +) Changes to the "openssl engine" utility to include;
     - verbosity levels ('-v', '-vv', and '-vvv') that provide information
       about an ENGINE's available control commands.
     - executing control commands from command line arguments using the
       '-pre' and '-post' switches. '-post' is only used if '-t' is
       specified and the ENGINE is successfully initialised. The syntax for
       the individual commands are colon-separated, for example;
	 openssl engine chil -pre FORK_CHECK:0 -pre SO_PATH:/lib/test.so
     [Geoff]

  +) New dynamic control command support for ENGINEs. ENGINEs can now
     declare their own commands (numbers), names (strings), descriptions,
     and input types for run-time discovery by calling applications. A
     subset of these commands are implicitly classed as "executable"
     depending on their input type, and only these can be invoked through
     the new string-based API function ENGINE_ctrl_cmd_string(). (Eg. this
     can be based on user input, config files, etc). The distinction is
     that "executable" commands cannot return anything other than a boolean
     result and can only support numeric or string input, whereas some
     discoverable commands may only be for direct use through
     ENGINE_ctrl(), eg. supporting the exchange of binary data, function
     pointers, or other custom uses. The "executable" commands are to
     support parameterisations of ENGINE behaviour that can be
     unambiguously defined by ENGINEs and used consistently across any
     OpenSSL-based application. Commands have been added to all the
     existing hardware-supporting ENGINEs, noticeably "SO_PATH" to allow
     control over shared-library paths without source code alterations.
     [Geoff]

  +) Changed all ENGINE implementations to dynamically allocate their
     ENGINEs rather than declaring them statically. Apart from this being
     necessary with the removal of the ENGINE_FLAGS_MALLOCED distinction,
     this also allows the implementations to compile without using the
     internal engine_int.h header.
     [Geoff]

  +) Minor adjustment to "rand" code. RAND_get_rand_method() now returns a
     'const' value. Any code that should be able to modify a RAND_METHOD
     should already have non-const pointers to it (ie. they should only
     modify their own ones).
     [Geoff]

  +) Made a variety of tweaks to the ENGINE code.
  +) Made a variety of little tweaks to the ENGINE code.
     - "atalla" and "ubsec" string definitions were moved from header files
       to C code. "nuron" string definitions were placed in variables
       rather than hard-coded - allowing parameterisation of these values