[gnutls-devel] Automatic library initialization

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Tim Rühsen <tim.ruehsen at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am Montag, 16. November 2015, 19:10:02 schrieb Andrew W. Nosenko:
>> On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <nmav at gnutls.org>
>>
>> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 4:54 PM, Tim Ruehsen <tim.ruehsen at gmx.de> wrote:
>> > >> Something like the following. Have each program not wishing to use
>> > >> global initialization to define a symbol which overrides a weak one
>> > >> from gnutls. In practice that would mean setting:
>> > >> GNUTLS_SKIP_GLOBAL_INIT
>> > >> in some global section in your program. That can also be easily
>> > >> backported in 3.3.x and you can check for that feature with an ifdef.
>> > >> Would that be acceptable?
>> > >
>> > > Brilliant idea. I'll use it for my projects... but other projects won't
>> > > benefit immediately (they first have to know).
>> >
>> > I'll then include it in 3.4.x and 3.3.x releases.
>>
>> First at all, IMHO, _current_ API, which eliminates requirement to call
>> explicitly some init function is a good.  And the "old-style API" with
>> requirement to call some init function before any thread and/or child
>> processes will be forked, which you want to resurrect, is a bad.
>>
>> Very simple example: DSO uses some library, which have requirement to
>> global init.  DSO loaded on demand.  How you meet this "global init before
>> any thread forked" requirement?
>
> I already wrote some words regarding this scenario earlier in this thread.
> Please re-read.
>
> Despite that, Nikos found a solution that doesn't touch current behavior.
>
> Tim
>

What exactly does gnutls do during initialization that takes this much
time?  Could it be made to generate whatever tables it needs at
compile time?

(I guess it needs to self-tests, but that should only apply in FIPS
mode, which shouldn't be the default.)

--Andy

>
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-- 
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC