[strongSwan-dev] packaging libstrongswan

[Mike Ryan]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 09:42:26AM +0200, Martin Willi wrote:
> > 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.

This is an understandable issue. I've only recently started using the
library. How much churn has the API/API gone through in recent releases?

> > 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.

That's pretty much what I've done, good to know the -D kludge is
officially sanctioned :)