[Python-Dev] Windows package for new SSL package?

[Mark Hammond]

> > * find_ssl() is along way from working on Windows.  Python itself
> uses magic
> > to locate an SSL directory in the main Python directory's parent.  On
> my
> > system, this is c:\src\openssl-0.9.7e, but obviously that could be
> almost
> > anywhere, and with almost any name.  See PCBuild\build_ssl.py and
> > PCBuild\_ssl.mak for the gory details.  I'm not sure how you would
> like to
> > approach this (insist on an environment variable for the top-level
> SSL dir
> > name?)
> 
> Can't we look in the registry for this?  We have a working Python;
> perhaps we can just use a Windows-specific registry lookup to find
> OpenSSL?  (I'm just blue-skying here; I have no clue how things work
> on Windows.)

Not really.  Python itself, when building _ssl, doesn't look for a binary
install of openssl, but instead a source directory and a working perl
interpreter so an openssl can be built suitable for linking with Python.
This source directory is just downloaded and unzipped - no registration
takes place, and any binaries that may be built are ignored (we just want
the .h and .lib files)

It might be possible to try and use build_ssl.py to locate the openssl
directory, but this will still require that someone building it has Python
built from source - I'm fairly sure that someone installing a Python binary
will not have build_ssl.py, nor are they likely to have a suitable openssl
directory or installation just "hanging around" either.

Mark