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Re: Time to deprecate gskit

From: Patrick Monnerat via curl-library <curl-library_at_lists.haxx.se>
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2023 12:57:53 +0100

On 1/2/23 11:46, Daniel Stenberg via curl-library wrote:
> Hello team,
>
> I propose we deprecate support for the gskit TLS backend [1] in August
> 2023:
>
> - This is a niche TLS library, only running on some IBM systems
> - no regular curl contributors use this backend
> - no CI builds use or verify this backend
> - gskit, or the curl adaption for it, lacks many modern TLS features
> making it
>   an inferrior solution
> - build breakages in this code takes weeks or more to get detected
> - fixing gskit code is mostly done "flying blind"
>
The real question is the whole OS400 port maintenance.

There has been some efforts from contributors in this direction, but no
regular maintainer for 6 years: I suggest to poll these people
individually outside of this list to ask about their possible
commitment, emphasing on gskit first.

Most of the reasons you list for deprecation are true, but gskit is the
ONLY backend available on the OS400. We can imagine there are some
silent OS400 users using libcurl with TLS even if not active on curl
itself and without even having eared about gskit: this is the most
common behavior of developers evolving in this IBM environment.

Also considering that "recent" features like the URL API have never been
implemented for OS400, the sustainability of this port without gskit
seems more than questionable.

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Received on 2023-01-02