[Seaside] Re: Serving HTTPS

[Andreas Raab]

On 11/16/2011 19:35, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote:
> Although SqueakSSL is usable today, it is not enough.

Let's be specific about what isn't working instead of broadly dismissing 
SqueakSSL as "not enough". What's currently missing in the plugin is two 
pieces of Mac support: Certificate validation (i.e., given a connection 
how does one verify the validity of the incoming cert) and certificate 
specification (i.e., given the id of a certificate, how does one extract 
it from the user's key chain and installs it on the connection).

However, while this may make SqueakSSL not be useful for some purposes 
on the Mac, it certainly doesn't render it useless in general. First of 
all, SqueakSSL works on Windows and Linux. Period.

Secondly, even on the Mac, depending on what exactly you're doing it can 
still be good enough if you can live without certificate validation. 
While I wouldn't do that for a banking app, I would have no hesitations 
doing so for the purpose of calling the facebook graph api for 
retrieving basic user information. The only thing you can't do at all at 
this point is run an SSL server on the Mac.

> The SecureSocketStream implementation (Smalltalk code) is difficult to port to Pharo.

What exactly are you trying to port and why? The code works out of the 
box as it is. There is no need to port anything.

> That is why there is Zodiac (http://zdc.stfx.eu). It reuses the current plugin, but uses much cleaner code. And it works well on Pharo.

I don't mind you throwing a plug for your pet project, but claiming that 
WebClient and SqueakSSL don't work well on Pharo is simply disingenuous. 
Try for yourself:

	Gofer new
		squeaksource: 'SqueakSSL';
			package: 'SqueakSSL-Core;
			package: 'SqueakSSL-Tests;
		squeaksource: 'WebClient';
			package: 'WebClient-Core';
			package: 'WebClient-Tests';
			package: 'WebClient-Pharo';
		load.

Then run the tests via:

	SqueakSSLTest buildSuite run.
	WebClientServerTest buildSuite run.

Here are the results for various releases:

Version           SqueakSSL       WebClient
Pharo 1.1         11/11 PASS      56/58 PASS 2 Errors [*1]
Pharo 1.2         11/11 PASS      59/59 PASS
Pharo 1.3         11/11 PASS      59/59 PASS
Squeak 4.1        11/11 PASS      58/58 PASS 1 Expected Failure
Squeak 4.2        11/11 PASS      59/59 PASS
Squeak 4.3        11/11 PASS      59/59 PASS

[*1] Caused by an inconsequential bug in Pharo 1.1.

So again, unless you have specific evidence showing that SqueakSSL 
doesn't work on Pharo, I think you shouldn't make general claims like that.

> I think the server side is less important: an Apache HTTPS proxy is a better (stronger/safer/faster) solution.

This should be a matter of choice, not of necessity. Having to 
administer Apache, stunnel and whatnot creates many more potential 
points of failure and pain.

Cheers,
   - Andreas