strongSwan Developer Documentation¶

Getting the Source Code¶

The easiest way to get the source code is checking it out from our Git repository:

git clone git://git.strongswan.org/strongswan.git

The master branch is also mirrored to GitHub.

Browsing the Source Code¶

The Git repository can be browsed online using either Gitweb or the integrated repository browser (slower).

Source Code Documentation¶

The newer parts of strongSwan use extractable inline documentation extensively. This documentation is extracted with doxygen for the latest release
and uploaded to strongswan.org/apidoc, but can also be browsed here using the Developer Documentation button above.

Code style¶

For new code (charon, libstrongswan, ...) we heavily use an object oriented programming style for C. Also have a look to our basic programming style guidelines.

Contributions¶

Before starting development, please read our contribution requirements.

Components¶

The src directory in the strongSwan distribution contains a set of compoments:

charon	The IKEv2 keying daemon.
pluto	The IKEv1 keying daemon.
libstrongswan	The strongSwan library with basic functions used by the daemons and utilities
libcharon	Contains most of the code and the plugins of the charon daemon
libhydra	Contains daemon-specific code and plugins used by both the charon und pluto daemons
libfreeswan	The deprecated library used by pluto.
dumm	An new and experimental UML testing framework in development.
ipsec	The ipsec command line tool wrapping commands and other tools.
libfast	A lightweight framework to build native web applications using ClearSilver and FastCGI.
manager	A graphical management application for charon based on libfast.
openac	Utility to build attribute certificates on the command line.
pki	Public Key Infrastructure utility.
scepclient	Utility to enroll certificates using the SCEP protocol.
starter	Reads ipsec.conf and controls the keying daemons pluto and charon.
stroke	Command line utility to control charon via the stroke protocol.
whack	Command line utility to control pluto via the whack protocol.