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Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:18:32 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: runtime plugins, FMT_MAIN_VERSION, and OpenVMS support (was: New core (?) LM fails alignment)

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:59:21AM -0500, jfoug wrote:
> With the addition of new param values (salt/bin align), should the fmt_main
> version number be kicked up from 10 to 11, or do we simply ignore that
> version 10 ever really 'existed'?
> 
> NOTE, there is absolute nothing which uses that version number at this time
> anyway, so the version number itself is currently really only documentation.

The "OpenVMS support 2.4" plugin by David Jones is the only runtime
plugin so far, but it does exist.  It's listed at:

http://openwall.info/wiki/john/patches#Other-files-closely-related-to-patches-found-on-this-page

I think it checks for version 9.  So until we update this one, merely
moving from version 9 to 10 is sufficient - no need to update to 11 and on.
We just need to break compatibility with this one plugin gracefully,
since we already broke it anyway.

Also, I think we should integrate this OpenVMS support code, likely
with changes (replace explicit pthreads with OpenMP? or just omit
threads support initially, to simplify integration - then enhance?)
Then get rid of the runtime plugins support for now since I see almost
no use for it at least in its current Linux-only form.  Who would want
to add formats to an existing binary build of John on Linux when it's so
much simpler to just build from source anyway?  Well, maybe at some
point there will be demand for that, maybe if we support it better - but
not yet - and currently any out-of-tree format is bound to become
outdated/unmaintained and only work with a narrow range of jumbo versions.

Alexander

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