libssh/doc/mainpage.dox

/**

@mainpage

This is the online reference for developing with the libssh library. It
documents the libssh C API and the C++ wrapper.

@section main-linking Linking

We created a small howto how to link libssh against your application, read
@subpage libssh_linking.

@section main-tutorial Tutorial

You should start by reading @subpage libssh_tutorial, then reading the documentation of
the interesting functions as you go.

@section main-features Features

The libssh library provides:

 - Full C library functions for manipulating a client-side SSH connection
 - SSH2 and SSH1 protocol compliant
 - Fully configurable sessions
 - Server support
 - SSH agent authentication support
 - Support for AES-128, AES-192, AES-256, Blowfish, 3DES in CBC mode, and AES in CTR mode
 - Supports OpenSSL and GCrypt
 - Use multiple SSH connections in a same process, at same time
 - Use multiple channels in the same connection
 - Thread safety when using different sessions at same time
 - POSIX-like SFTP (Secure File Transfer) implementation with openssh extension support
 - SCP implementation
 - Large file system support (files bigger than 4GB)
 - RSA and DSS server public key supported
 - Compression support (with zlib)
 - Public key (RSA and DSS), password and keyboard-interactive authentication
 - Full poll()/WSAPoll() support and a poll-emulation for Win32.
 - Runs and tested under x86_64, x86, ARM, Sparc32, PPC under Linux, BSD, MacOSX, Solaris and Windows

@section main-copyright Copyright Policy

libssh is a project with distributed copyright ownership, which means we prefer
the copyright on parts of libssh to be held by individuals rather than
corporations if possible. There are historical legal reasons for this, but one
of the best ways to explain it is that it’s much easier to work with
individuals who have ownership than corporate legal departments if we ever need
to make reasonable compromises with people using and working with libssh.

We track the ownership of every part of libssh via git, our source code control
system, so we know the provenance of every piece of code that is committed to
libssh.

So if possible, if you’re doing libssh changes on behalf of a company who
normally owns all the work you do please get them to assign personal copyright
ownership of your changes to you as an individual, that makes things very easy
for us to work with and avoids bringing corporate legal departments into the
picture.

If you can’t do this we can still accept patches from you owned by your
employer under a standard employment contract with corporate copyright
ownership. It just requires a simple set-up process first.

We use a process very similar to the way things are done in the Linux Kernel
community, so it should be very easy to get a sign off from your corporate
legal department. The only changes we’ve made are to accommodate the license we
use, which is LGPLv2 (or later) whereas the Linux kernel uses GPLv2.

The process is called signing.

How to sign your work
----------------------

Once you have permission to contribute to libssh from your employer, simply
email a copy of the following text from your corporate email address to:

contributing@libssh.org

@verbatim
libssh Developer's Certificate of Origin. Version 1.0

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
    have the right to submit it under the appropriate
    version of the GNU General Public License; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of
    my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source license
    and I have the right under that license to submit that work with
    modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under
    the GNU General Public License, in the appropriate version; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
    person who certified (a) or (b) and I have not modified it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution are
    public and that a record of the contribution (including all
    metadata and personal information I submit with it, including my
    sign-off) is maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed
    consistent with the libssh Team's policies and the requirements of
    the GNU GPL where they are relevant.

(e) I am granting this work to this project under the terms of the
    GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the
    Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of
    the License, or (at the option of the project) any later version.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html
@endverbatim

We will maintain a copy of that email as a record that you have the rights to
contribute code to libssh under the required licenses whilst working for the
company where the email came from.

Then when sending in a patch via the normal mechanisms described above, add a
line that states:

@verbatim
   Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
@endverbatim

using your real name and the email address you sent the original email you used
to send the libssh Developer’s Certificate of Origin to us (sorry, no
pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.)

That’s it! Such code can then quite happily contain changes that have copyright
messages such as:

@verbatim
   (c) Example Corporation.
@endverbatim

and can be merged into the libssh codebase in the same way as patches from any
other individual. You don’t need to send in a copy of the libssh Developer’s
Certificate of Origin for each patch, or inside each patch. Just the sign-off
message is all that is required once we’ve received the initial email.

Have fun and happy libssh hacking!

The libssh Team

@section main-rfc Internet standard

@subsection main-rfc-secsh Secure Shell (SSH)

The following RFC documents described SSH-2 protcol as an Internet standard.

 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4250" target="_blank">RFC 4250</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol Assigned Numbers
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4251" target="_blank">RFC 4251</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol Architecture
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4252" target="_blank">RFC 4252</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Authentication Protocol
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4253" target="_blank">RFC 4253</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Layer Protocol
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4254" target="_blank">RFC 4254</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Connection Protocol
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4255" target="_blank">RFC 4255</a>,
    Using DNS to Securely Publish Secure Shell (SSH) Key Fingerprints
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4256" target="_blank">RFC 4256</a>,
    Generic Message Exchange Authentication for the Secure Shell Protocol (SSH)
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4335" target="_blank">RFC 4335</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Session Channel Break Extension
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4344" target="_blank">RFC 4344</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Layer Encryption Modes
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4345" target="_blank">RFC 4345</a>,
    Improved Arcfour Modes for the Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Layer Protocol

It was later modified and expanded by the following RFCs.

 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4419" target="_blank">RFC 4419</a>,
    Diffie-Hellman Group Exchange for the Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Layer
    Protocol
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4432" target="_blank">RFC 4432</a>,
    RSA Key Exchange for the Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Layer Protocol
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4462" target="_blank">RFC 4462</a>,
    Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API)
    Authentication and Key Exchange for the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4716" target="_blank">RFC 4716</a>,
    The Secure Shell (SSH) Public Key File Format
 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5656" target="_blank">RFC 5656</a>,
    Elliptic Curve Algorithm Integration in the Secure Shell Transport Layer

Interesting cryptography documents:

 - <a href="http://www.cryptsoft.com/pkcs11doc/" target="_blank">PKCS #11</a>, PKCS #11 reference documents, describing interface with smartcards.

@subsection main-rfc-sftp Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)

The protocol is not an Internet standard but it is still widely implemented.
OpenSSH and most other implementation implement Version 3 of the protocol. We
do the same in libssh.

 - <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02" target="_blank">
   draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02.txt</a>,
   SSH File Transfer Protocol

@subsection main-rfc-extensions Secure Shell Extensions

The OpenSSH project has defined some extensions to the protocol. We support some of
them like the statvfs calls in SFTP or the ssh-agent.

 - <a href="http://api.libssh.org/rfc/PROTOCOL" target="_blank">
    OpenSSH's deviations and extensions</a>
 - <a href="http://api.libssh.org/rfc/PROTOCOL.agent" target="_blank">
    OpenSSH's ssh-agent</a>
 - <a href="http://api.libssh.org/rfc/PROTOCOL.certkeys" target="_blank">
    OpenSSH's pubkey certificate authentication</a>

*/