bug#14380: [gmane.emacs.bugs] bug#14380: 24.3; `network-stream-open-tls' fails in some imap servers on w32

[João Távora]

On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> Sorry, I forgot to CC the two of you and the post just went to the bug
> list.  I didn't know if you'd see it so this is just a courtesy CC.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
> To: 14380@debbugs.gnu.org
> Cc:
> Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 09:12:05 -0400
> Subject: bug#14380: 24.3; `network-stream-open-tls' fails in some imap 
> servers on w32
> On Fri, 10 May 2013 21:44:12 +0100 João Távora <joaotavora@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> JT> Honestly I thought builtin tls was some kind of tls library in elisp.
> JT> Needing external libraries doesn't make it very builtin :-), but
> JT> that's just my opinion.
>
> Implementing TLS in ELisp is possible, sure, but it would be extremely
> slow and there's considerable risk in reimplementing that protocol.  We
> chose to use GnuTLS instead, which is a fast reliable C implementation
> and is available for W32 and all our other platforms.

lol, I wasn't suggesting implementing it in elisp at all, I just read
built-in and assumed in was either statically linked in C or elisp. The
point it that needing external libraries which are not always bundled
doesn't make it very "builtin". But naming things, along with cache
invalidation,
is a a hard problem in programming :-)

> I've seen dozens of bugs related to "almost working" external TLS
> binaries on all platforms.

Yes, but have you looked closely at this particular one? The point is rather
to increase robustness. That is, `open-tls-stream` could/should promise
to cleanup the process buffer of its handshake garbage, so that future
functions that use that resource don't see it and don't get confused by it.

I'm assuming they don't need to see it, I might be wrong.

But if I'm right and that fix is performed then you've effectively extended
"imap just works" the set of W32 emacs users who type "M-x gnus" on a
vanilla emacs in a system with some cygwin installation in PATH. Maybe it's
a small set but I'm in it (when I'm at work).

> GnuTLS integration with Emacs.  My vote is to require GnuTLS with Emacs
> and to only support it, but there are some questions there, mainly for
> W32 and Mac OS X: do we auto-update GnuTLS?  What happens when the
> GnuTLS we install conflicts with another system install?  And so on...

That's all fine, I guess. I vote for that too :-)

Thanks,
João