[openssl-dev] OpenSSL support on Solaris 11 (built on Solaris 10)

[Andy Polyakov]

Hi,

> From archives/google, I understood that the OpenSSL works/supported on
> Solaris 11 platform, but in our case, it's a bit different scenario.
> 
> Currently, we build OpenSSL v0.9.8zc on Solaris 10 (SunOS, sun4u, sparc)
> and it works well on Solaris 10 platform. We use Sun Studio 12 compiler.
> 
> We would like to run it on Solaris 11.2 (SunOS, sun4v, sparc) platform
> w/o changing the build platform. I mean we will continue to build
> OpenSSL on Solaris 10 and run it on Solaris 11.
> 
> Has anyone encounter such situation?  Appreciate any help/pointers if
> this mechanism will work?

It totally should work on Solaris. I personally would even encourage
such practice, i.e. compile on older platform. In *general* case there
are situation when it would be inappropriate (if possible at all), but
OpenSSL on Solaris is not such case. Well, one can still argue that
older compiler might fail to produce optimal code for both platforms, or
even that compiler has to be run on target platform, but for most
critical parts we do have assembly modules. Well, not so much in 0.9.8,
so that there is a contradiction in what I'm trying to say, but it's
about specifics, not general principle. And general principle is that
assembly modules found in later releases can be compiled on old systems
yet deliver optimal performance on new ones. This is thanks to run-time
switch, when CPU capabilities are detected at run-time and different
code paths are chosen for execution on different processors. [And to the
fact that extension instructions are hand-coded so that you don't need
latest assembler to compile.] Once again, this is for later OpenSSL
releases. As far as 0.9.8 goes, if performance of compiler-generated
code not being optimized for specific processor is not an issue, then
compiling on older system is totally viable approach.