03 Sep 2009

Botan - an open source C++ crypto library.

Currently working on an assignment for my Internet Security unit and needed an open source crypto library. Had a look at a couple I already had installed on my workstation and a couple of others including:

• Crypto++
• libmcrypt
• libgcrypt
• polarssl
• Botan

Polarssl looked interesting though in the end I have decided on the Botan C++ library for a couple of reasons:

• It's a C++ library and the application must be written in C++.
• The included documentation is great and includes build instructions, and a tutorial.
• Examples included.
• It builds clean, i.e. no warnings, with -Wall. I don't understand why more developers don't pay attention to this.
• Actively maintained. Last release was the 13th of August, 2009.
• Project has a good website.

Just downloaded it and built the library on Arch x86_64 with no problems. Final target machine is also x86_64 so it looks good. Not sure if I should go with a dynamic or static library. I don't have root access to the final target machine so would need to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH to allow a dynamic library to load from a non standard directory.