Question

Can anyone list a set of complete steps to install OpenSSL on Windows 7? I have tried a lot of things, but invariably, one or the other library is found missing. I know that OpenSSL depends on libxml2, pthread libraries and so on. I have tried downloading them from various sources, but I am a bit frustrated by a lot of errors that are showing up one after the other. If someone has done it before, it would be great if you can help me with the list of steps.

Answer 1

Download the latest OpenSSL source distribution (at the moment openssl-1.0.1c.tar.gz), not the FIPS module (read here), then follow the simple steps in the INSTALL.W32 or INSTALL.W64 file in the root of the source distribution. It’s trivial. What you need is one of the supported VC++ versions and Perl (Strawberry Perl works fine for me) and you may opt in to using NASM for optimized code in a few places.

Depending on whether you use NASM it will be (without):

perl Configure VC-WIN32 no-asm --prefix=d:/openssl

or (with NASM):

perl Configure VC-WIN32 --prefix=d:/openssl

followed by:

ms\do_ms

and then after starting the VC++ command line (“Visual Studio XXXX Command Prompt”) for the configured environment do from the root folder of the source distribution:

nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak

then:

nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak test

and if that comes out clean (“passed all tests”):

nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak install.

I just ran it up this this step and it works flawlessly (as usual!) for the latest released OpenSSL (1.0.1c) under Visual Studio 2005. Re-trying with 2010 now.

Edit: just tried under the “Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010)” and it works as well here.

Note: consider the remarks in the INSTALL.W64 (“Caveat lector”).

Also note: the FIPS module complements the OpenSSL distribution. You aren’t actually compiling OpenSSL itself when you build the FIPS module!