PyNSS^? Thoughts

PyNSS^? would be a project to wrap Mozilla's Network Security Services (NSS) with Python. The purpose and clients would be the same as with M2Crypto, which wraps OpenSSL.

I am aware of one other "PyNSS" implementation, which is part of PyAuthD^?:

• Homepage (in German): http://svn.asta.mh-hannover.de/categories/python/pyauthd/
• Freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/pyauthd/

PyAuthD^? is very limited in scope at the moment, though, and as such the NSS wrapping there is so small that it wouldn't even be a suitable starting point.

Now that I got that out of the way, here are some requirements and design thoughts I have on this, based on my experiences with M2Crypto:

• Package name: nss (unless someone already has taken that)
  • All file names all lowercase
• NSS functions that are available in Python are named the same in Python as in C
  • There are probably cases where some change makes sense to Python, and these would start with '??' prefix.
• Functions that are totally new in PyNSS^? would start with prefix '??'
• Rest of the naming would follow Python conventions
• Classes etc. would possibly start out by mimicing what Mozilla uses to wrap NSS with IDL (PSM etc.).
• First proof-of-concept release should be similar in functionality what Python's socket.ssl provides, i.e. SSL with no real security.
• First implementation probably using SWIG, but possibility of going pure C/C++.
• Source layout such that it would be possible to do python setup.py test for example
• Plan source code and modules so that the roadmap to wrap more NSS is clear