Re: Modular InetAddress

[Guilhem Lavaux]

Bryce McKinlay wrote:

> On Oct 26, 2003, at 10:31 PM, Guilhem Lavaux wrote:
>
> > here is a quick patch to be able to have a modular getHostByName and 
> > a getHostByAddr.
> > To change implementation the user has just to provide a property 
> > gnu.java.net.dns
> > containing the full class name of an implementation.
>
>
> Hi Guilhem,
>
> I'm not convinced that we need this. I know it is a feature of kaffe, 
> but who is using it? What sort of system has sockets but no native 
> ability to look up a DNS address?

Hi Bryce,

The problem may not be the inability to look up a DNS address but some 
other limitations:
* non reentrancy of the native implementation (it may occur on old 
systems (libc5) and we want to support as much system as possible)
* blocking solver (some JVM like kaffe may not use pthreads but some 
other compatible systems which is not compatible with
native implementation of "gethostbyname")
* non fully compliance concerning the decoding of the incoming answers 
from DNS.

It is clear that implementing this structure has also drawbacks:
* slightly heavier and slower than directly calling native methods for 
systems which native calls are OK, (pure virtual methods)
* we call a package which is able to return a lot of informations we 
don't use

But the big advantage is that you have a replacement for 
buggy/non-friendly systems.

Regards,
Guilhem.