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+====================
+Wounded hero revived
+====================
+
+Lessons learned from porting M2Crypto to Py3k
+
+:Author: Matěj Cepl <mcepl@cepl.eu>
+
+
+Origins
+=======
+
+* Mitch Kapor sold Lotus to IBM and decided to perpetrate good.
+  One of his projects was Chandler_.
+
+* Project is gone_ The only remainder of the project is
+  M2Crypto_, full Python binding for OpenSSL.
+
+.. class:: handout
+
+    Once upon a time, one Mitch Kapor, who sold Lotus to IBM, and
+    with money he got decided to perpetrate good. He did many
+    truly good things for the computer world, was co-founder of
+    EFF, helped with Mozilla Foundation, but he also founded
+    rather unsuccessful project, a Python-based universal PIM,
+    called Chandler_.
+
+    Subversion of the project has been mirrored couple of times,
+    one by me.
+
+
+.. _Chandler:
+    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software)
+
+.. _gone:
+    https://gitlab.com/mcepl/chandler
+
+.. _M2Crypto:
+    https://gitlab.com/m2crypto/m2crypto/
+
+
+M2Crypto
+========
+
+* M2Crypto was maintained by `Heikki Toivonen`_ few years after
+  Chandler folded, but his last release 0.21.1 was from 2011.
+
+* Maintenaned in Red Hat by `Miloslav Trmač`_.
+
+* I took over the project in May 2015.
+
+.. class:: handout
+
+    Maintenaned in Red Hat by `Miloslav Trmač`_, who collected
+    all patches in RHEL package.
+
+    I took over the project in May 2015 with the intention just
+    to publish all patches and be a point of contact for any
+    issue reports. I haven’t expected much activity, because
+    package was very silent in RHEL.
+
+.. _`Heikki Toivonen`:
+    https://www.heikkitoivonen.net/
+
+.. _`Miloslav Trmač`:
+    https://github.com/mtrmac
+
+
+Strengths and weaknesses
+========================
+
+.. Strengths
+
+* Backed up by stable C library
+
+* Rather large coverage of OpenSSL API
+
+* Surprisingly widespread use
+
+* Large test suite
+
+.. Weakness
+
+* Unknown issues
+
+* Python 3
+
+* M2Crypto API copies OpenSSL too closely
+
+* Support for Mac OS X and Windows (not mentioning ``*BSD``) was
+  broken.
+
+.. class:: handout
+
+    Backed by … comparing to PyCrypto and other horrors.
+
+
+
+Opportunities & Threats
+=======================
+
+.. Opportunities
+
+* Satisfying current user base
+
+* Replacing horrors like PyCrypto
+
+* Goal of maitenance is to maintain API
+
+* Extend support on non-Linux platforms
+
+.. Threats
+
+* Python ``ssl`` module
+
+* Python cryptography_
+
+.. class:: handout
+
+    Distribution bug tracker (especially an enterprise one) is
+    not a good measure of the real state of use and quality of
+    package.
+
+    There are apparently many programmers for custom software,
+    who use M2Crypto (still it is one of the most complete
+    bindings for OpenSSL).
+
+    Threats as a “competing” projects, which may replace
+    M2Crypto.
+
+.. _cryptography:
+    https://github.com/pyca/cryptography
+
+
+Unicode
+=======
+
+* The biggest problem of all Python 2 programs: complete
+  confusion between py2k ``str`` means py3k ``str`` and when
+  ``bytes``.
+
+* There are numerous uses of both in M2Crypto, because of course
+  both strings and binary data are present in all functions of
+  OpenSSL.
+
+
+Strategy
+========
+
+* Type Hints
+
+* CI
+
+* Extension of platform support
+
+
+Type Hints
+==========
+
+* `PEP 484`_ providing **optional** type annotations. Quite
+  controversial, but clearly very useful for libraries
+
+* Native for Python >= 3.5, but supports py2k compatible syntax::
+
+    def sum(x, y):
+        # type: (int, int) -> int
+        return x + y
+
+* Especially useful for our situation: marking types helps us to
+  analyze what invidivual py2k ``str`` actually mean.
+
+.. _`PEP 484`:
+    https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/
+
+
+C API
+=====
+
+* All Unicode/bytes translation happens on C level as well
+
+* Based on ``swig``, which fortunately natively supports
+  ``--py3``.
+
+* Also need to support two versions of OpenSSL API, 1.1 and
+  older.
+
+* Minimize use of ``#ifdef`` s and rather use included shims
+  for missing functions.
+
+
+C shims of missing functions
+============================
+
+* For OpenSSL < 1.1
+
+* For Python 2
+
+  - ``PyLong_FromLong()`` and ``PyUnicode_AsUTF8()`` just simple
+    ``#define`` s.
+
+  - All Pythons >= 2.6 contain whole set of Py3k function stubs
+    in ``bytesobject.h``.
+
+* For Python 3
+
+  - ``PyFile_AsFile()`` I have no idea, why it was removed from
+    py3k API