[Python-Dev] SSL support in _socket

[M.-A. Lemburg]

I have a problem with SSL support in _socket and the way
setup.py does the autodetection: even though SSL may be
installed on the system, it seems that they changed the
exposed APIs between patch level releases. 

As a result, _socket compiles but the import fails on platforms 
which have the wrong OpenSSL version installed. setup.py then
simply removes _socket from the extension list and builds
Python without socket support which is a really Bad Thing 
since _socket without SSL support compiles just fine.

What can we do about this ?

Since auto-detection is happening rather early in setup.py
it doesn't seem possible to apply some fallback scheme
depending on extra knowledge for the various modules.

Perhaps we should simply let setup.py build two extensions:
_socket (without SSL) and _socketssl (with SSL) ?! If the
_socketssl build or import fails for some reason, Python 
could still pick up the _socket extension in socket.py.

Comments ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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