Re: [Pan-users] SSL not supported?

[Duncan]

Mike Brown posted on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 02:33:13 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 06:50:06AM +0000, Duncan wrote:
>> [...]
>> This is certainly more complicated than pan doing it by itself

> Whew!  That was quite a response.  Mucho appreciated.
> 
> As for the potential need to install development packages, that is not
> mentioned anywhere in the requirments, etc.  The list in the README file
> only lists a package and a version.  No mention that it possibly needs
> development and runtime.

The readme file lists the packages as shipped by upstream.  It's the 
binary distros that are splitting lib packages in half, into runtime and 
devel pieces, since that allows most users, the binary-only users who 
never build anything depending on that package, to skip a number of extra 
files (in addition to the *.pc file, there's the header files, etc, and 
sometimes developer documentation).

The readme is therefore simply expecting users to be familiar with the 
normal build process on their distro, which for many binary-based-
distros, means installing the devel half of dependencies.

> Just to see what would happen, I installed the gmime development package
> and sure enough, pkg-config still doesn't know that gmime exists. 
> Again, IMHO, the use of pkg-config to find what is installed is
> unreliable.  Either directly look for what is needed, or use yum to see
> if it exists. pkg-config certainly doesn't do the trick.

Yum certainly wouldn't do the trick either.  While a lot of distros use 
yum, it's really distro-specific, while libraries are normally distro 
independent, sometimes only shipping in sources form, to be packaged by 
the distros that want them.

> So, I am going to get the F16 media from my friend and update to it. 
> Then I'm going to install one of the DEs that you've listed, after doing
> a little research to see which one I want.
> 
> I'll then be able to yum a newer version of pan that has SSL built in.

Do be aware that while SSL in general works, being the new (and 
relatively complex) feature it is, it doesn't have anything NEAR the 
history or DECADES of actual use by all sorts of people against all sorts 
of servers, that the plain-text connection code does.  As such, it does 
still have issues in certain cases.  Just because it's available doesn't 
mean it's guaranteed to work on your hardware connected to your server.

IOW, with a newer pan built with SSL support, it'll /probably/ work just 
fine for you , but...  It'd just be a shame to have you do the upgrade in 
ordered to get a pan that supports SSL, only to have it not work for you 
because your provider does something weird with the SSL connection that 
doesn't work with pan's SSL code just yet.  Just a risk to be aware of 
with the new SSL code, before you go to all that trouble, just in case...

> Thanks for the info.

Glad to be of help. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman