When testcrypt.h lists a function argument as 'opt_val_foo', it means
that the argument is optional in the sense that the C function can
take a null pointer in place of a valid foo, and so the Python wrapper
module should accept None in the corresponding argument slot from the
client code and translate it into the special string "NULL" in the
wire protocol.
This works fine at argument translation time, but the code that reads
testcrypt.h wasn't looking at it, so if you said 'opt_val_foo_suffix'
in place of 'opt_val_foo' (indicating that that argument is optional
_and_ the C function expects it in a translated form), then the
initial pass over testcrypt.h wouldn't strip the _suffix, and would
set up data structures with mismatched type names.
I've written a new standalone test program which incorporates all of
PuTTY's crypto code, including the mp_int and low-level elliptic curve
layers but also going all the way up to the implementations of the
MAC, hash, cipher, public key and kex abstractions.
The test program itself, 'testcrypt', speaks a simple line-oriented
protocol on standard I/O in which you write the name of a function
call followed by some inputs, and it gives you back a list of outputs
preceded by a line telling you how many there are. Dynamically
allocated objects are assigned string ids in the protocol, and there's
a 'free' function that tells testcrypt when it can dispose of one.
It's possible to speak that protocol by hand, but cumbersome. I've
also provided a Python module that wraps it, by running testcrypt as a
persistent subprocess and gatewaying all the function calls into
things that look reasonably natural to call from Python. The Python
module and testcrypt.c both read a carefully formatted header file
testcrypt.h which contains the name and signature of every exported
function, so it costs minimal effort to expose a given function
through this test API. In a few cases it's necessary to write a
wrapper in testcrypt.c that makes the function look more friendly, but
mostly you don't even need that. (Though that is one of the
motivations between a lot of API cleanups I've done recently!)
I considered doing Python integration in the more obvious way, by
linking parts of the PuTTY code directly into a native-code .so Python
module. I decided against it because this way is more flexible: I can
run the testcrypt program on its own, or compile it in a way that
Python wouldn't play nicely with (I bet compiling just that .so with
Leak Sanitiser wouldn't do what you wanted when Python loaded it!), or
attach a debugger to it. I can even recompile testcrypt for a
different CPU architecture (32- vs 64-bit, or even running it on a
different machine over ssh or under emulation) and still layer the
nice API on top of that via the local Python interpreter. All I need
is a bidirectional data channel.
