HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO PATCHES OpenSSL ------------------------------------ (Please visit for other ideas about how to contribute.) Development is coordinated on the openssl-dev mailing list (see the above link or for information on subscribing). If you are unsure as to whether a feature will be useful for the general OpenSSL community you might want to discuss it on the openssl-dev mailing list first. Someone may be already working on the same thing or there may be a good reason as to why that feature isn't implemented. The best way to submit a patch is to make a pull request on GitHub. (It is not necessary to send mail to to open a ticket!) If you think the patch could use feedback from the community, please start a thread on openssl-dev. You can also submit patches by sending it as mail to Please include the word "PATCH" and an explanation of what the patch does in the subject line. If you do this, our preferred format is "git format-patch" output. For example to provide a patch file containing the last commit in your local git repository use the following command: % git format-patch --stdout HEAD^ >mydiffs.patch Another method of creating an acceptable patch file without using git is as follows: % cd openssl-work ...make your changes... % ./Configure dist; make clean % cd .. % diff -ur openssl-orig openssl-work >mydiffs.patch Note that pull requests are generally easier for the team, and community, to work with. Pull requests benefit from all of the standard GitHub features, including code review tools, simpler integration, and CI build support. No matter how a patch is submitted, the following items will help make the acceptance and review process faster: 1. Anything other than trivial contributions will require a contributor licensing agreement, giving us permission to use your code. See for details. 2. All source files should start with the following text (with appropriate comment characters at the start of each line and the year(s) updated): Copyright 20xx-20yy The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved. Licensed under the OpenSSL license (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at 3. Patches should be as current as possible. When using GitHub, please expect to have to rebase and update often. Note that we do not accept merge commits. You will be asked to remove them before a patch is considered acceptable. 4. Patches should follow our coding style (see and compile without warnings. Where gcc or clang is available you should use the --strict-warnings Configure option. OpenSSL compiles on many varied platforms: try to ensure you only use portable features. 5. When at all possible, patches should include tests. These can either be added to an existing test, or completely new. Please see test/README for information on the test framework. 6. New features or changed functionality must include documentation. Please look at the "pod" files in doc/apps, doc/crypto and doc/ssl for examples of our style.