[Nix-dev] Python's hashlib lacks support for RIPEM160 because it's configured w/o openssl

[Peter Simons]

Hi guys,

Russell O'Connor discovered a problem in the Python 2.7 expression. We have
factored support for OpenSSL out into a separately built module. The result is
that the Python base interpreter is configured believing that OpenSSL won't be
available. However, this has consequences beyond the 'ssl' module itself. The
'hashlib' module lacks support for all digests that are imported from OpenSSL,
such as RIPEM160, and this omission cannot be remedied by importing
python.modules.ssl at run-time.

How do we deal with this problem? The most obviously solution would be to have
Python depend unconditionally on OpenSSL so that full crypto support is always
available.

Does anyone have another suggestion?

Take care,
Peter