linux-packaging-mono/mcs/class/Mono.Security.Providers.NewSystemSource

Mono.Security.Interface / Mono.Security.Providers

This is not a public API yet, but will eventually become public.

Mono.Security.Interface

Mono.Security.Interface provides an abstraction layer for the TLS APIs that are currently being used by Mono's class libraries.

The main API entry points are MonoTlsProviderFactory.GetProvider() and MonoTlsProviderFactory.InstallProvider().

Mono.Net.Security

Mono.Net.Security provides the internal implementation and lives inside System.dll as private and internal APIs. Mono.Security.dll uses reflection to access these.

On Mobile, the Mono.Security.Interface APIs are included as public APIs in System.dll.

Mono.Security.Providers

Implementations of the Mono.Security.Interface.MonoTlsProvider class to provide TLS functionality.

The default provider is inside System.dll - it will be used automatically if you don't explicitly install a custom provider, so simply call MonoTlsProviderFactory.GetProvider() to use it.

• DotNet: Provides the default SslStream implementation from System.dll, only using public .NET types.

• NewSystemSource: Compiles several referencesource files which would normally live inside System.dll if we compiled it with their SslStream implementation.

  This allows to keep the code in System.dll as-is, while still providing the new SslStream, which will be required by the new TLS code.

  System.dll needs to make its internals visible and we're using several compiler / external alias tricks in here to make this work.

  In this configuration, MONO_SYSTEM_ALIAS, MONO_FEATURE_NEW_TLS and MONO_FEATURE_NEW_SYSTEM_SOURCE (defining conditional for this configuration) are defined. We do not define MONO_X509_ALIAS here.

The Mono.Security.Providers.DotNet and Mono.Security.Providers.NewSystemSource directory is currently enabled in the top-level Makefile, but the resulting binaries should only be used to test the new TLS code and not shipped as stable APIs.

Pending changes

This code is not actually being used in System.dll yet. I have some local changes which will switch the existing code in WebClient, SmptClient and FtpWebRequest over, but these need to be carefully tested.

At the moment, this work branch only provides new code and build changes, which shuffle some stuff around. There are also several new files which are conditional and not actually being built by default.

Build Configurations

• Normal build: Builds everything as before with some new APIs added, but without modifying any existing functionality.

• Build with the newtls profile: Builds System.dll with the new SslStream implementation from the referencesource. This is currently a "build then throw away" profile and not enabled from the top-level Makefile. The resulting System.dll won't actually work at runtime since it's missing the new TLS code; building it helps find problems and ensures that it will actually be possible to build this once we deploy it.

• Mono.Security.Providers: The new TLS code requires the newly built System and Mono.Security.Providers.NewSystemSource from this branch installed in the system. It is recommended to install it into a custom prefix and set that as custom runtime in Xamarin Studio.

Last changed March 07th, 2015, Martin Baulig martin.baulig@xamarin.com