Should FIPS_mode() and FIPS_mode_set() be updated, deprecated, or completely removed..

[Matt Caswell]

On 04/03/2020 08:15, Tomas Mraz wrote:
> The current implementation in the PR - unconditionally returning error
> - is completely useless. It would make some (not much) sense if we
> aimed for ABI compatibility with 3.0 however that is definitely not the
> case so the only reasonable thing is to either try to emulate the
> behavior as much as possible or remove completely so the users of the
> API would know immediately that they have to be changed.
> 

I don't have a strong view, but I think I tend to agree that removal is
the better option. 3.0 *is* a major release and we've never guaranteed
that there will be *no* breaking changes at all. We've only aimed for
most applications that work in 1.1.1 not having to change. Since these
functions exist in 1.1.1, but always fail, it seems reasonable to think
that very few 1.1.1 application actually call them. If there are any
that do so, then they probably need to re-examine their code anyway to
confirm what the behaviour should be with 3.0.

If we remove them then we should have some good documentation somewhere
that explains what people should do instead.

I also think this will probably need an OMC vote.

Matt