Should have done this earlier. I’ve had several requests for the LDNS library that I built on Windows, so here it is. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a quick and dirty port, with minimal testing. Around the time I finally succeeded with building it, I was laid off and had to find a new job. So in the midst of all that I didn’t really do much more with it, and a couple of other unrelated projects came up that’s I may talk more about here later. I really want to get back to my goal of a .tel plugin for Thunderbird. But I’m hoping someone else will be able to take LDNS and polish it up more and we can all benefit from each other’s work.
LDNS for Windows – Source
March 11th, 2010LDNS on Windows – Success!
November 10th, 2009FINALLY! ldns is now working on Windows. More polish would be good, but it is working. Ultimately the changes weren’t too tough. Had to find replacements for a couple of functions (gettimeofday and getopts) and add a function for creating the resolver based on entries from the registry rather than /etc/resolv.conf.I’ll try to get it posted up soon after some more tweaking, but if anyone is interested in the code now, let me know and I’ll shoot you a copy.
LDNS on Windows, take 2
November 5th, 2009After many attempts, and just recently finding posts on Google groups from someone else trying to do the same thing (use ldns from XPCOM) it’s become obvious that linking the VC++ built XPCOM libraries with Cygwin built ldns just won’t work. The library formats simply aren’t compatible.
Mixing Cygwin, XPCOM, ldns
September 4th, 2009In my continuing adventures working on a .tel extension for Thunderbird, I’ve switched to using ldns for the DNS lookups. After a bit of futzing around to give ldns the ability to get the DNS server addresses from the Windows registry rather than resolv.conf. I haven’t tested the result very heavily, but building ldns under Cygwin seems to be working fine. The ‘drill’ utility won’t build – seems to be something to do with Cygwin’s lack of support for IPv6, but the core library works.
MS Suckage Beyond My Wildest Imagination
August 7th, 2009OK, so I’ve been working on some stuff related to the .tel domains – basically an extension for Thunderbird / Firefox for synchronizing contact info through a domain. Best I can tell the DNS support in Firefox already doesn’t support the NAPTR (Naming Authority Pointer) records used by .tel lookups. So I’m having to write an XPCOM component to handle it. On Windows I’m using MS’s windns lib (for the time being) and there the troubles began…
Unit Testing and Databases
May 3rd, 2009Recently I’ve been refactoring some DB access code. Basically unraveling the DB code that is sprinkled throughout the code into a separate layer. Testing this code is challenging and honestly tedious. Read the rest of this entry »
Hooray for HDA!
March 17th, 2009Just came across this thing called the “Amahi Home Linux Server”, something they refer to as a HDA or Home Digital Assistant. Looks like a pretty nice idea. I haven’t tried it yet – I just found it and don’t really have a spare machine that would be appropriate right now. But what interests me is that it’s very much like something I was working on about 10 years ago that I called “Home AIWeb”.
Reading a Classic
February 18th, 2009It seems that as software engineers it takes so much time and effort keeping up with technology that all we ever have time to read are technical books and materials. But we really should get out of that rut when we can. I’ve lately been reading something of a classic. Read the rest of this entry »
Autodelegation: A Multiple-Inheritance Alternative
February 3rd, 2009While working in .NET and Java, on (admittedly rare) occasions I’ve wanted multiple-inheritance. Or I’ve had an implementation of an interface that I would like to extend, but the implementation was final. Essentially there have been times I’ve wanted to incorporate some existing functionality into a new class where inheritance seemed the most natural way but couldn’t. Something I would like to see in a language is what I call “autodelegation”.
Back in the saddle
February 3rd, 2009Wow, it’s been a while since I posted here. I started this blog soon after being laid off. I started a new job in May, moving from .NET back to Java development. Then in October the economy started hitting my new employer and they decided to close the local office I was working out of so I was laid off AGAIN! Fortunately I was able to find another position quickly, again in Java development. In the midst of all that there were family illnesses, loss of a relative, heat pump conking out, and a myriad other slings and arrows.