IMHO this interface is a way for the user to improve the quality of the randomness it would get from the given RNG, *not* to replace (or diminish) its other sources. My proposal is to abolish this parameter, especially since now it is simply ignored (and IMHO – for a good reason).
That's a fine proposal ... it just can't be implemented until a major release boundary, when our ABI stability policy permits such breaking changes. And that is fine. The sooner the better, but ABI stability makes sense too. My main point is: RAND_add() and whatever similar in purpose interface calls we may define in the future should exhibit the following behavior: Mix the provided randomness into the RNG state *immediately*, and Keep pulling other sources and mixing them into the state – don’t subtract from the “needed entropy” count the amount you presumably got from the user. Frankly, the need to provide double entropy argument doesn’t bother me all that much – especially if the value 0 is accepted there. ;-)
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