Building a TLS 1.3 Implementation in Pure Common Lisp
Happy New Year!For the past 20+ years, every Common Lisp application that needs HTTPS has traditionally had one option: cl+ssl, a binding to OpenSSL. This works, but it means dealing with library versioning problems and platform-specific installation headaches.I felt this pain personally for ocicl, the Common Lisp package manager I maintain. On Windows, users had to source their own OpenSSL installation – and the options that exist rarely integrate with the Windows certificate trust store, leading to the decision to disable certificate validation for ocicl on Windows.I knew TLS could be implemented in pure Common Lisp. Ironclad already provides all the cryptographic primitives. The question was whether modern AI assistants could help write it in the short amount of time I was willing to…
