There are problems on certain platforms, and possible answers on how to (temporarly) solve them.

PROBLEMS

+* System libcrypto.dylib and libssl.dylib are used by system ld on MacOS X.
+[NOTE: This is currently undergoing tests, and may be removed soon]
+
+This is really a bug in ld, which seems to look for .dylib libraries along
+the whole library path before it bothers looking for .a libraries.  This
+means that -L switches won't matter unless OpenSSL is built with shared
+library support.
+
+The workaround may be to change the following lines in apps/Makefile.ssl and
+test/Makefile.ssl:
+
+  LIBCRYPTO=-L.. -lcrypto
+  LIBSSL=-L.. -lssl
+
+to:
+
+  LIBCRYPTO=../libcrypto.a
+  LIBSSL=../libssl.a
+
+It's possible that something similar is needed for shared library support
+as well.  That hasn't been well tested yet.
+
+As long as Apple doesn't fix the problem with ld, this problem building
+OpenSSL will remain as is.
+

README

@@ -122,6 +122,13 @@
  lists the functions; you will probably have to look at the code to work out
  how to use them. Look at the example programs.
 
+ PROBLEMS
+ --------
+
+ For some platforms, there are some known problems that may affect the user
+ or application author.  We try to collect those in doc/PROBLEMS, with current
+ thoughts on how they should be solved in a future of OpenSSL.
+
  SUPPORT 
  -------