Re: 01/02: gnu: libressl: Update to 2.5.3.

[Mark H Weaver]

Leo Famulari <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 05:08:29PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> A simple approach is to force LibreSSL to always use its non-getentropy
>> code, and lift this restriction once we clearly require newer kernels¹.
>> The attached patch does that.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>
>> +     ;; Do as if 'getentropy' was missing since older Linux kernels lack it
>> +     ;; and libc would return ENOSYS, which is not properly handled.
>> +     '(#:configure-flags '("ac_cv_func_getentropy=no")))

Ludo's approach looks good to me.

> Personally, I don't think it's paramount to offer substitutes for the
> packages in question. But I know this is an unpopular position, in
> general :)

It's not just about not providing substitutes.  At present, our libressl
simply won't work properly on systems with older kernels, including
hydra.gnu.org and our x86 build slaves.

One issue is that there's a longstanding hope for us to switch to using
libressl for most or all packages that currently use openssl.  We would
be blocked from doing that if we accept that our libressl won't work on
older kernels.

Thoughts?

       Mark