Subject: SRV resolver API?

From: "John S. Bucy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 21:35:51 -0500

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It seems like the uptake on SRV has been very slow.  As an application
developer, on more than one occassion now, I've wanted to use SRV and
been stymied by the unavailability of resolver implementations.  To my
knowledge, there are only 2 opensource implementations: RULI and adns
which are both GPLed. In any case, there isn't one in libc/libresolv
on any Unix platform that I know of.  The DnsQuery() API in Windows
appears to handle SRV as of Win2K/XP.

I'd like to suggest that part of the problem -- at least on the Unix
side -- is that there isn't a standardized resolver API for SRV.  The
IPv6 effort came up with getaddrinfo() and friends in rfc2553; its
gone into POSIX as well.  Why haven't we standardized a resolver API
for SRV?

john

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From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 14:43:44 +0000

> appears to handle SRV as of Win2K/XP.

bind8/contrib/srv/ contains arnt gulbrandsen's work in this area, which
while inadequate as the basis for a POSIX API, is adequate for application
work.  it's been in bind8/contrib/ since 1998.

> gone into POSIX as well.  Why haven't we standardized a resolver API

more broadly than that, a full dns client-side api is needed.  we drafted
one a couple of years ago but couldn't find the funding for it.  c and c++
programmers should have the same high level access to the dns protocol that
perl programmers have (through the excellent Net::DNS module).