Re: Need to check on compatibility issue

Matt Caswell <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.encryption.openssl.user
Message-ID <CAODx15eqJL_uajbjC4CEHZnz2opZXrhMYO5izRmT98B4=RZQ+w@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 at 20:22, Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf-SWp7JaYWvAQV+D8aMU/[email protected]>
wrote:

>
> Matt Caswell <[email protected]> wrote:
>     >> All of our openssl releases are backwards compatible with older fips
>     >> providers, no issues are currently known.
>     >>
>     >> To be clear, the above means that libcrypto.so from openssl 3.5 will
>     >> work with the fips.so library from 3.4 and earlier releases.  It
> does
>     >> not imply any forward compatibility, i.e. the fips.so file from 3.5
> is
>     >> not guaranteed to work with the libcrypto.so library from 3.4 and
>     >> earlier.
>     >>
>
>     > Actually we test in both directions, e.g. 3.5 library with 3.4 fips
>     > test run is here:
>
> But, do you promise it will always work?
>

Yes. At least within the same major version. We *may* choose to extend the
promise across some major versions (e.g. we may choose to promise that 3.x
providers will still work with 4.x libcrypto and vice versa) but that would
be on a case by case basis.


>
> I would think that makes it impossible to add new ABI, or change the ABI
> that
> openssl provides.
>

Within the same major version we only ever make additions to the ABI. So
newer versions may expose more functions at the fips.so level. But the
provider interface is designed such that libcrypto can discover the
capabilities that any particular provider supports. So if a new libcrypto
encounters an older fips provider, it will only use the things that that
provider can do. Similarly if an older libcrypto is used with a newer
fips.so, then it won't know how to deal with new functions made available
by the fips.so - but that's ok. It will just continue to use the old
functions.

Matt



>
> --
> Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF-SWp7JaYWvAQV+D8aMU/[email protected]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
>            Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "openssl-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openssl-users+unsubscribe-MCmKBN63+Bmbup2nOX2J7Q@public.gmane.org
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/openssl.org/d/msgid/openssl-users/CAODx15eqJL_uajbjC4CEHZnz2opZXrhMYO5izRmT98B4%3DRZQ%2Bw%40mail.gmail.com.
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.