NoMachine's port of OpenSSH (2)

[MatXi]

Dear all,

I’m trying to compile the port of OpenSSH written by NoMachine, carefully following their instructions there. However, this fails at different stages so far:

• OpenSSL-1.0.1e refuses to compile, from the very first call to GCC (cryptlib.c)
• When trying to use the openssl version delivered with Cygwin, the “./configure” step fails because of the “-mno-cygwin” option on the command-line.
• When suppressing manually any occurrence of the “-mno-cygwin” option in configure.ac, and trying again, “./configure” doesn’t seem to find openssl, even when specified with the –with-ssl-dir option.

Would it be possible to get a precise description of the environment used last time a build has been achieved? Which version of the compiler and various libraries, for example?

Thanks in advance.

• This topic was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by MatXi.

[titan]

Just a quick recap because I’m sure this will be helpful to make things more clear:

– We did this port since we use OpenSSH on Windows. We also ship a SSHD in the Enterprise servers.

– While the code is exactly the same, we build using a custom-developed build system where autotools and pkgconfig are part of a bigger whole, with higher level scripts taking care of the differences between configurations and platforms. This custom build system required a considerable amount of work and is one of the most valuable assets of our company, therefore we decided to keep it for us.

– We put somebody at creating the instructions to build OpenSSH in the average Windows environment of the average user, but we DID NOT test it in every environment and in every configuration and have no intention to do so because we just care to build it in OUR environment (where it obviously builds perfectly).

– We released this code upstream to OpenSSH and we’ll of course continue to provide any development or bug fix that would arise as part of using OpenSSH in the NoMachine product family. At the same time we don’t want to maintain a “Windows port” ourselves. In fact this is the exact reason why generally people make ports and then release them upstream.

– AFAIK, in 3 years or more, we never heard from OpenSSH, neither to confirm they have seen the code or to report build problems. That’s not a problem. We needed the code and made it, but, as you can imagine, we have lost some interest.

– We obviously have no interest in dealing with all possible build environments, Windows versions, GCC versions, Cygwin versions, MinGW versions, library dependencies, accessory packages needed, etc. etc. We tell what we used and what was the exact configuration, so that everybody can audit the code in the same conditions and make builds that are repeatable across different machines.

That said, let me add that I’m very sorry about the problems you are having. We’ll get the developer who made the configuration and build script to check what may have gone wrong, but if he didn’t even list the version of the compiler used or the various library versions, I agree with you that he didn’t do a good job. If you have other hints on how the documentation can be improved, we’ll be glad to follow your suggestions.

[MatXi]

Titan,

Thank you for this input, all of it makes perfect sense to me. I certainly understand that your company has no specific interest in making this port run (resp. build) on every platform (resp. in every development environment).

But I’m just thinking that when trying, I have probably been using a newer environment than the one your people used last time they built it. It just would help to know which one they used, and unfortunately that is not part of the documentation.

With this info, I could then go back in software time, get it built, start upgrading bits, and correct problems one step at a time. Maybe I could then try and maintain this port in the future, and let everyone enjoy an up-to-date version?

Thanks in advance.

[titan]

I certainly understand that your company has no specific interest in making this port run (resp. build) on every platform (resp. in every development environment).

Believe me, we really WANT it to run on every Windows and build in every environment. I just wanted to say that, given the thousands of things boiling in the pot, people should not expect too much from us on this front :-/. This was clearly NOT aimed at you. From what you say the instructions are inexplicably poor. Probably at the time we last built the port stand-alone, the software built OK and who was responsible of creating the instructions thought a quick how-to was enough. Then things bit-rotted. We’ll fix our fault ;-).

[reza]

MatXI,
OpenSSH port was updated to compile with MinGW gcc provided with latest Cygwin release.
Please download it from https://www.nomachine.com/NoMachine-OSS-ports and follow
build instruction available here https://www.nomachine.com/AR01J00621.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by reza.

[MatXi]

Hi Reza!

Thanks, I’ll be testing it right away!

[Author]

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