gethostby* users

[Steve Langasek]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 11:10:15AM -0700, Ulrich Drepper wrote:

> Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > Some parts of the protocol just don't
> > allow for anything but IPv4, but where we can, things are being updated
> > for Samba 3.2.  

> I've pointed out at numerous occasions that getaddrinfo is not for IPv6
> only.  You should always use getaddrinfo, even for IPv4-only situations.
>   See

>   http://udrepper.livejournal.com/16116.html

> The gethostby* interfaces simply don't cut it in today's network anymore.

Generally true.  As a minor caveat, I would mention that getaddrinfo() in
the most recent glibc applies an ill-advised sorting rule (RFC 3484 section
6, rule 9) to IPv4 addresses which breaks the expected round-robin behavior
of gethostby* for no particular benefit (the addresses are sorted by length
of prefix match, which doesn't at all map to how the Internet is put
together).

  http://bugs.debian.org/438179

So at present, migrating to getaddrinfo() is not entirely without tradeoffs.
:/

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/