[strongSwan-dev] packaging libstrongswan

[Martin Willi]

Hi Mike,

> libstrongswan is an extremely nice, general-purpose implementation of a
> lot of useful crypto stuff.

Thanks :-).

> Has there been any effort to package it for use outside the strongswan
> tree?

I thought about it, but haven't put any effort in it yet.

The main argument against using libstrongswan in other projects is the
API/ABI stability: We don't have one. Maintaining an API/ABI would be a
lot of work and would limit our possibilities.

> it would be extremely useful to be able to #include <libstrongswan.h>
> and build against -lstrongswan

Shouldn't be that hard. I currently do this with some minor projects,
just -I/path/to/strongswan/src/libstrongswan. To tell the library that
your libc supports printf hooks, add -DHAVE_PRINTF_SPECIFIER.


To install libstrongswan, configure it with
--disable-pluto/charon/tools/..., it should be possible to trim it down
to just libstrongswan. To install the headers, you'd have to include all
headers under src/libstrongswan into this package.

Regards
Martin