Re: BIND

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>]

"Alexei Polkhanov" writes:
> You guys not serious, are you ? You are going t reimplement BIND in
> Ada ?  First I worry what is the point ? Just _write it in Ada_, and
> that is it ?
> 
> How do you JUSTIFY THE NEED for it ?

Bugs in BIND that nobody cares to fix because of design problems or
source code that is too difficult to read and debug.  Common knowledge
that BIND is so insecure that nobody but the most inexperienced
sysadmins will run it outside a chroot jail.  Concerns with the
long-term security threats posed by BIND's inherent problems, as well
as the monoculture associated with BIND.

Heck, I don't even _need_ a reason why I should write a program, if
it's free software and if I do it on my spare time.  My reason is:
Just to have fun, okay?

> You don't even bother to look what kind of problem BIND has right
> now, and you definitely underestimated the scope.

You do not know our estimation, so you cannot accuse us or anyone of
underestimating the scope.  Apparently, do don't even bother to
consider the possibility there may be experienced software engineers
on this group.

> What about things like DNSSEC - huge undertaking with puplic key
> encryption protocols, have performance problems in BIND, TSIG,
> national languages support (like chinese unicode DNS names).

These things will naturally have to be designed into AdaBind.  Are you
trying to imply it cannot be done?  Just because _you_ cannot do it
does not imply _nobody_ can.

> Some zones can grow up to several millions of records - how you
> going to cope with that ? What about Incremental Zone transfer
> protocol ? New BIND definitely need advanced support for RDBMS like
> ORACLE, MySQL etc and should include "pluggable" internal in-memory
> database by type of Berkeley DB.

Yes indeed.  So?

With GNADE and APQ, it is already possible to write Ada programs that
interface with databases of arbitrary complexity, and even make the
database a pluggable module, leaving the choice of database to the end
user.

> So you signing for a minimum 60,000 LOC project, without doing any
> research on subject.

You do not know if any of us has done any research, so you cannot
accuse anyone of not making any.

60 kSLOC is not large, and it can be done by a single person (BIND was
indeed written mostly by a single person) or by a small team (2-3
people).  I myself have written a 120 kSLOC program with a team of 2-3
people.  Or look at PolyORB, which also was made by a small team and
is also 120 kSLOC.

> Noone need another BIND which does not solve problems of existing
> BIND and that is not only couple of buffer overruns.

Indeed no.  We need an AdaBind that does solve the problems of BIND,
and is more maintainable.  The proponents of AdaBIND (myself included)
think the situation of BIND is so hopeless that the best solution to
its problems is to rewrite it - only better.  And Ada will help.

Your post is not helping anyone, not even yourself.  Please tell us
what kind of contribution you were trying to make.  I have little
respect for destructive thinking, but I admire people who try to make
things happen.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.