[Vm-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] Crypto plugins for ubuntu 32-bits

[David T. Lewis]

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 05:28:11PM -0500, David T. Lewis wrote:
>  
> On Fri, Dec 04, 2015 at 09:57:02PM -0500, Robert Withers wrote:
> > I loaded the CryptographyPlugins package, from the Cryptography 
> > repository into a VMMaker image, and generated the crypto plugins 
> > externally. Although I have not measured it rigorously, there is a 
> > noticeable performance improvement with SqueakElib tests.
> > 
> > Untar these Ubuntu 32-bit crypto plugins into /usr/local/lib/squeak/5.0...
> > 
> > https://www.dropbox.com/s/v502zudwsbtr243/CryptoPlugins.ubuntu32.12.4.15.tgz?dl=0
> > 
> > Let me know any issues.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Robert
> 
> Yikes, it seems that we have had this issue open for nearly 10 years now:
> 
>   http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=5228 "0005228: Include Cryptographic Primitives in Base VM - DESPlugin"
> 
> Robert, I think you are on the vm-dev list, may I ask some follow up questions there?
> 
> Dave

There are four plugins in CryptoPlugins:

  DESPlugin
  DSAPlugin
  MD5Plugin
  SHA256Plugin

First regarding DSAPlugin:

DSAPlugin class is in VMMaker, and also in the Cryptography repository. The
one in VMMaker seems to compile cleanly, but the one in Cryptography does not
(at least not in my trunk VMM / cmake / 64-bit linux environment). I did not
look closely for the reason, but I want to ask first if the DSAPlugin
belongs in VMMaker, or should it live in in the Cryptography repository?

If it is being actively maintained, I would think that might be better to keep
it in Cryptography so that the maintainers can more easily keep it updated.
Either way, we should clean up the package names so that DSAPlugin is not
in two different packages ('CryptographyPlugins' if loaded from the Cryptography
package, or 'VMMaker-Plugins' if loaded from the VMMaker repository).

I am working in a trunk VMMaker (aka "interpreter VM") with the Cmake build
process. Class DSAPlugin results in libDSAPrims.a being built, but not an
actual plugin. So I am guessing there is a problem in the build procedure,
because I should be ending up with a plugin named either DSAPrims or so.DSAPrims.
Does that sound right? 

DESPlugin, SHA256Plugin, MD5Plugin:

These all seem to build cleanly. I did not test them functionally, and I
can't say if they are 64-bit clean. But I see no compiler warnings, so
there is a good chance that they are OK on 64 bit also. I see no obvious
reason not to include these plugins in VM builds.

It looks to me like all we need to do is agree on where DSAPlugin should
live, and update package names accordingly. And if the DSAPlugin in VMMaker
is missing anything from the Cryptography version, we would need to sort
that out.

I do not recall if there may have been any license or patent issues associated
with any of these plugins. Please remind me if that might be an issue.

Dave