OpenSSL Communities

Feedback on handling of generated files

Dmitry BelyavskyDmitry Belyavsky Thu 23 Oct 2025 3:08PMPublicSeen by 28

(text stolen from Nicola with minor amendments)

This PR has been brought to the attention of the TAC, to discuss a further improvement to the latest changes in the handling of the generated files (which are now committed read-only).

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/28838

In a nutshell, the idea is to revert some of the currently generated headers to be completely static again, and have an `#include` directive to include a `.inc` file which is instead generated.

This is expected to minimize accidental writes to generated files, by isolating the "generated" part, and making the "main" headers/C files standalone and writable again.

This reuses the `.inc` mechanism that was already part of openssl practices.

This is likely going to be accepted and merged to `master`, and applied in a similar way to other files.

I'm going to ask the Corporation TAC has for an exception to backport this approach also to 3.6, after it is merged in `master`.

I'd like to sample the community feedback on this to provide our recommendation.

Choose the option(s) you favor.

Dmitry Belyavsky

Do you support granting an exception?

poll by Dmitry Belyavsky Closed Sun 26 Oct 2025 4:00PM

What is this poll about?

Why is this important?

What are you asking people to do?

Choose the option(s) you favor.

Results

ResultsOption% of pointsVoters
Yes835Angel YankovLucas MüllingJames BourneDmitry BelyavskyDimitri John Ledkov (Chainguard)
Abstain171Gordon Tetlow
No00 
Undecided29Tomas MrazPedro MonrealAnton ArapovJon EricsonXin LiKlaus TriendlJohn BaldwinYi OuyangPierre SchmitzKurt RoeckxMatěj CeplAlexander BokovoyRaviTobias HeiderŁukasz 'sil2100' ZemczakTim HudsonKaterina MicovaShiva Sbenny VasquezIgor Seletskiy

6 of 35 votes cast (17% participation)

Lucas Mülling

Lucas MüllingThu 23 Oct 2025 3:10PM

Yes

Any code generation via perl is a not good idea, but this is less bad

James Bourne

James BourneThu 23 Oct 2025 3:10PM

Yes

By the looks of things this is designed to minimise accidental writes to generated files by separating generated from static content?

Angel Yankov

Angel YankovThu 23 Oct 2025 3:10PM

Yes

This does make the generation better.