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2022-02-16

Re: The annoyance of TLS Libraries

tags: complexity software

Stacksmith has a serious point:

### It's 10 lines of code, dude!

Easy, you say, because you use Go, or Rust, or Python... It's like extra 10 lines, you say. No, it is not. It is a giant library that pulls in numerous other Python or Go libraries out of thin vacuum and stores them in hidden directories on your computer, (often making them really hard to delete, by the way). What do these libraries do? No one knows, but some guy on the internet says they are safe. Eventually, they pull in a TLS library written in C (more likely you already have it on your machine). Some other guys on the internet OK'd it too.

gemini://gemini.ctrl-c.club/~stack/gemlog/2022-02-16.tls.gmi

local copy

Full ack!

Complexity at its best.

And in my humble opinion this "it's only 10 lines of code" is the same sort of thinking, that makes email clients interpret html data being sent their way, wrongly called email, instead of just showing the ugly characters on the screen. This is the same sort of thinking that makes my pal at the lug list scratch his head, why dd if=file.iso of=/dev/sdb is NOT working, because the destination is used --- by the automatic we mount all storage devices as a convenience even when you least expect it. And I'm afraid this is the same thinking, that makes most Linux Distributions today an unbelievable heap of stuff.

Whether adding TLS to gemini is a good or a bad thing, I don't know. But I have enjoyed to divide this whole stack into parts:

run nginx to handle the TLS and certificate handling --- probably a monstrosity, this nginx code, but I have it running to serve some .onion thing anyway.
run vger, a very simple gemini server, which does not know how to handle TLS or certificates. All it knows is, the request comes in via stdin, the answer goes out via stdout. Thanks, Solene!
to make nginx and vger communicate some glue is needed, in voted for inetd or maybe xinetd ... and I sure hope it does not qualify as another monstrosity. Sigh.

/en/2021/20211023-alpine-vger.gmi

/en/2021/20211018-openbsd-vger.gmi

Thank you, Stacksmith, you made me smile!

Cheers,

~ew

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