Subject: Re: bug#14380: 24.3; `network-stream-open-tls' fails in some imap servers on w32

From: Ted Zlatanov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 19:05:22 -0400

On Sun, 19 May 2013 12:45:12 +0100 João Távora <[email-masked]> wrote: 

JT> On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 4:17 AM, Ted Zlatanov <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> Wouldn't you rather get GnuTLS to work by default?  Otherwise we serve
>> the use case "I have no secure transport, so let me use a hack by
>> default."

JT> I don't understand. What is the hack here? External binary for TLS?

Using an external binary to transport SSL or TLS is a hack IMO.

>> My proposal would be to push out the next Emacs bundled with the latest
>> GnuTLS DLLs, only support GnuTLS, provide users with instructions on
>> updating them, and treat GnuTLS vulnerabilities as Emacs
>> vulnerabilities.  This is not ideal but IMO better than the current
>> situation.

JT> ... but then you have all these headaches.

It's a headache I'm willing to endure for the sake of Emacs users.

The alternative, which João is enduring now, is to punt the problem.

This is a question for the Emacs maintainers: do you agree with me on
the above plan?  It would mean changing the way Mac OS X and W32 Emacs
builds are distributed, to include the GnuTLS libraries with the build,
and we'd have to implement a way (perhaps through the ELPA) to
distribute updates to these libraries.

JT> The fix I proposed aims for the status quo, that is: make external
JT> TLS binary support slightly more robust. My test case is even smaller:

JT> * W32
JT> * cygwin carrying the responsibility burden
JT> * vanilla emacs working with tls/imap/gnus.

Did you propose a patch?  I would commit a patch but can't write it
despite your great description of the problem.

Ted