ftp vs http vs scp

From: Michael Sokolov <msokolov_at_ivan.Harhan.ORG>
Date: Fri May 28 11:13:57 2004

der Mouse <mouse_at_rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:

> I, for example, run lynx, and on two separate occasions
> I have looked into convincing it to support SSL;

Ahmm, Lynx has supported SSL for a long time. More precisely, it has
hooks that can be enabled at compile time: if you compile with -DUSE_SSL
and link with the SSL libraries, you'll get SSL-capable Lynx.

This is not a new feature, as I (deliberately) use a very old version of
Lynx. In 1997-98 I was on the Lynx development mailing list and saw their
development process. That was right at the time when Foteos Macrides (Fote),
who maintained Lynx from times immemorial until version 2.7.x, was
retiring from Lynx development and passing the baton to the new gang. I was
personally very displeased with what the new gang did to Lynx (there were
many issues, but the absolute show-stopper for me was when they replaced
simple Makefiles with the GNU autoconf morass), and I chose to forever stick
with Fote's last version (2.7.2) plus my own small changes. My version
of Lynx (2.7.2MS) lives on my FTP site:

ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG:/pub/net/www/lynx

I didn't have to do any special work for SSL, since SSL was already there
when I picked up Fote's last version.

> in each case, I got
> about four levels deep in tools-to-build-the-tools before running into
> a requirement for something ridiculously heavyweight - perl, I think -
> and abandoning the attempt.

The SSL libraries were a pain to build under pure 4.3BSD, but I succeeded,
and it was just usual compilation pains (fixing code that assumed "modern"
C, headers and libc), no special tools like Perl required.

MS
Received on Fri May 28 2004 - 11:13:57 BST