Thanks for the tip on the compiler stuff! If I end up needing the module I'll give the PPM a try. It does kind of bum me out that the solution to any problem with his module on Win32 is always "use the PPM"... It's even in the doc for the module. I don't know anything about XS but the C bits that call into OpenSSL look sane compared to various "how to use OpenSSL" things I've found. Perhaps I can convince the builders of the PPM to betray their secrets. It looks like the OpenSSL 0.9.7 is still getting security fixes, maybe I'll try building against that.