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The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

jameshfisher.com

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Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#21

Post by dsp1234 »

dmitriid wrote: post #18
protomyth wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, http://www.libressl.org/ won’t help you either, because there literally isn’t any documentation of LibreSSL. Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page. So, I guess the "literally isn’t any documentation" is wrong. OpenBSD likes their man pages.

Clicking on OpenSSL takes you to OpenSSL wiki, and he talks about the wiki vs. man pages at the very beginning of his article. Other links take you elsewhere. Like OpenBSD man pages for libs. He didn’t need a lib. Yes, the LibreSSL pages contains in total 0 man/docs/wiki pages. Instead it points to external websites.

openssl(1) links to https://man.openbsd.org/openssl

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#22

Post by gbrown_ »

> there literally isn’t any documentation of LibreSSL.

This is plain wrong, it's particularly annoying as a great deal of effort has been put into updating the documentation [1].

> Instead, you just have to read the OpenSSL docs, and just hope the behavior is roughly the same.

I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume they refer the "OpenSSL docs" as naming hasn't been changed, as opposed to looking at actual OpenSSL documentation. Indeed it doesn't make a great sense rename everything in the documents because as the LibreSSL website states.

    libssl: a TLS library, backwards-compatible with OpenSSL
    libtls: a new TLS library, designed to make it easier to write foolproof applications
[1] https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20161215221715

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#23

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

dmitriid wrote: post #18
protomyth wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, http://www.libressl.org/ won’t help you either, because there literally isn’t any documentation of LibreSSL. Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page. So, I guess the "literally isn’t any documentation" is wrong. OpenBSD likes their man pages.

Clicking on OpenSSL takes you to OpenSSL wiki, and he talks about the wiki vs. man pages at the very beginning of his article. Other links take you elsewhere. Like OpenBSD man pages for libs. He didn’t need a lib. Yes, the LibreSSL pages contains in total 0 man/docs/wiki pages. Instead it points to external websites.

No, it takes you to the OpenBSD man page wiki, not the Open SSL wiki. But the tool is still named OpenSSL for interoperability.

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#24

Post by eikenberry »

larrik wrote: post #17
gpf wrote: post #9

This is a macOS problem. OpenSSL on Linux has extensive man pages and a --help switch.

On Linux Mint 18: > (bso) larrik@local:~/bso$ openssl --help > openssl:Error: '--help' is an invalid command. It lists a bunch of valid commands, though. Of course, you can't do `openssl help genrsa` or anything sensible like that.

Funny that is what you get in Linux Mint, given that it is based on Debian and on Debian (stretch) you get...

    $ openssl --help
    Invalid command '--help'; type "help" for a list.
Maybe Linux Mint 18 is based on an older version.

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#25

Post by dmitriid »

dsp1234 wrote: post #21
dmitriid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking on OpenSSL takes you to OpenSSL wiki, and he talks about the wiki vs. man pages at the very beginning of his article. Other links take you elsewhere. Like OpenBSD man pages for libs. He didn’t need a lib. Yes, the LibreSSL pages contains in total 0 man/docs/wiki pages. Instead it points to external websites.

openssl(1) links to https://man.openbsd.org/openssl

It took me a while to find where the link to openssl(1) is on that page.

So, in order to find documentation, one would have to land on LibreSSL webpage and click on all links hoping to get to the correct one.

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#26

Post by [deleted] »

smhenderson wrote: post #12
protomyth wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, http://www.libressl.org/ won’t help you either, because there literally isn’t any documentation of LibreSSL. Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page. So, I guess the "literally isn’t any documentation" is wrong. OpenBSD likes their man pages.

Not to mention summary pages to each of the three libraries provided by libressl. On each of those there are then links to man pages for each function offered by the libraries. Not sure what he's missing, I've always found OpenBSD's documentation to be first class.

[deleted]

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#28

Post by dmitriid »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #23
dmitriid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking on OpenSSL takes you to OpenSSL wiki, and he talks about the wiki vs. man pages at the very beginning of his article. Other links take you elsewhere. Like OpenBSD man pages for libs. He didn’t need a lib. Yes, the LibreSSL pages contains in total 0 man/docs/wiki pages. Instead it points to external websites.

No, it takes you to the OpenBSD man page wiki, not the Open SSL wiki. But the tool is still named OpenSSL for interoperability.

Original quote:

> Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page

Please tell me where the very first OpenSSL link takes you. That's the one I clicked just to check.

Oh, right, it has to be the openssl(1), helpfully hidden away in the list of various utilities.

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#29

Post by gbrown_ »

dmitriid wrote: post #28
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it takes you to the OpenBSD man page wiki, not the Open SSL wiki. But the tool is still named OpenSSL for interoperability.

Original quote: > Going to that website and clicking on openssl reveals a manual page Please tell me where the very first OpenSSL link takes you. That's the one I clicked just to check. Oh, right, it has to be the openssl(1), helpfully hidden away in the list of various utilities.

> Please tell me where the very first OpenSSL link takes you. That's the one I clicked just to check.

Are you referring to the line informing the reader that LibreSSL is a fork and provides a link the the OpenSSL project?

Re: The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

#30

Post by jamesfisher »

gbrown_ wrote: post #22

> there literally isn’t any documentation of LibreSSL. This is plain wrong, it's particularly annoying as a great deal of effort has been put into updating the documentation [1]. > Instead, you just have to read the OpenSSL docs, and just hope the behavior is roughly the same. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume they refer the "OpenSSL docs" as naming hasn't been changed, as opposed to looking at…

Maybe I'm missing something - could you link me to the docs on http://www.libressl.org/? I expected a big link saying "Docs", but I don't see one. I've also tried a Google search for the docs[1], without success.

[1]: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Alibressl.org+docume...

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