nisse@lysator.liu.se (Niels Möller) writes:
I'm also not sure how to deal with research and Nettle. On one hand, it's nice if people use Nettle as a base for implementing new algorithms, and that makes it easier to integrate code once a new algorithm matures. But on the other hand, for a practical library, it's not really useful to include dozens of obscure algorithms and research projects. And supported algorithms also need documentation, which has a cost both to writing and reading. A compromise might be an --enable-experimental configure flag to include unsupported algorithms for research and evaluation purposes? Or some recommended practices for forking and extending Nettle.
An --enable-foo approach seems useful to me. It is good to have well-integrated versions of algorithms available in the nettle repository, but there is a high cost to inflict them to every installation. Maybe if a --enable-foo approach was introduced, we could even reduce the number of algorithms that are enabled by default.
/Simon