On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Alistair Crooks wrote:

# On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 08:05:45AM -0500, Trevor Johnson wrote:
#
# > It's true that the assembly code is only available for SPARC (MD5 only)
# > and x86.  Supposing someone uses one of those architectures, it should be
# > an advantage for that person.  Anyway, I was only responding to Alistair
# > Crooks' statement that he wanted something quick and OpenSSL didn't fit
# > the bill.  He seems to have withdrawn that objection.
#
# No, I have not withdrawn any such objection, and I do resent your
# saying that I have.  Once again, my apologies if you're just being
# disingenuous.

Alistair, I think he's misunderstood your statement somewhere as withdrawing
your objection.

# > I'll try to rephrase:  by having the same format, it makes it possible for
# > someone to generate hashes with either digest or openssl, whether for
# > addition to a new "md5" file or comparison to an existing one, without
# > having to munge the file or the output of openssl.  It makes them
# > compatible rather than gratuitously different.
#
#  From where I'm sitting, the *BSD md5(1) otuput is the standard.  I
# find it disappointing that openssl decided to be incompatible with
# this.

This is precisely the point I was attempting to illustrate.

# > > We've been doing it this way before the
# > > openssl stuff ever entered the picture.
# >
# > OpenSSL hasn't entered the picture at all, for hashing in pkgsrc, but it
# > has been out in the world since 1997 or 1998, and has been in NetBSD since
# > 1999, so for a slightly bigger picture, the situation is the opposite from
# > what you see.  The digest utility is just a few days old.
#
# The packages collection, and the FreeBSD ports collection on which it
# is based, are a bit older than that.

Exactly.

Can we stop this nonsense and just use what we have instead of stupidly
trying to shoehorn something in to the picture?

This isn't Linux where we swing the ship around suddenly  just because
someone says, Hey, this is a good idea, let's do it.  Even some of the less
popular decisions here have shown quite a bit of thought.

Regarding longevity, I'm going to stop typing things now lest I pixellate
something I will regret having said.

# Regards,
# Alistair


				--*greywolf;
--
*BSD: It spanks the knickers off those other operating systems.