Re: A comment about RFC 3484 address selection
Juliusz asked me to pass this along to -ctte since non-subscribers can't
post.
On Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 10:14:23PM +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> The semantics of gethostbyname have always been rather vaguely
> defined. In particular, it has never been clear whether multiple
> addresses are returned in an order specified by the DNS server, in the
> order corresponding to local preferences, or in some other order. The
> only thing that is clear is that the first address returned is the
> preferred address -- the one that should be used by primitive
> applications that are unwilling to deal with the complexities of
> multiple addresses.
>
> RFC 3484 clarifies that the list of addresses returned by getaddrinfo
> is in an order that takes into account both the server's and local
> preferences. While this might or might not be the best semantics, it
> is at least a well defined semantics; one that software authors can
> expect to rely on.
>
> Please, do not change standard interfaces in Debian. If you really
> believe a better interface is needed, please define a new interface
> under a new name; there is precedent to this approach (e.g. setresuid),
> which is much better than overloading standard names (e.g. the OpenBSD
> semantics of setuid, which, while better than the POSIX semantcs, causes
> useless confusion and grief).
>
> Regards,
>
> Juliusz
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