SoftDNS 0.2

[Joseph Sinclair]

Paul Dickson wrote:
> Over the last two and half weeks I rewrote tinydns from djbdns in
> Python.  I have most of the functionality.  I'm missing a bit of the
> details, specifically the dns database optional parameters, but the core
> functions pretty well (the first complete end-to-end tests were only done
> a couple of hours ago, but I've doing module testing as I when along).
> 
----
What did you use for testing?  Did you use a framework, custom code,
or manual testing?

> The code is here:
> 	http://members.cox.net/paul.dickson/softdns-0.2.tar.bz2
> 
> The optional parameters for the data entries in the tinydns.txt file are
> very recent.  Their processing is still a bit of a hack (in other words,
> don't expect nicely written code).
> 
> I've started using git/cogito for this project, which I learned last
> Saturday.
> 
----
If you can, it'd be interesting to have a post on this list with your experiences
with git/cogito.

> I started this project in order to understand the C code.  So to aid in
> the understanding, I rewrote the C code in Python.
> 
> The original C code had a lot of error checking, in fact just about every
> line had some error checking (which is requirement for C). 
----

Actually, modern C code (and even more so C++) doesn't require such
extensive error checking, there are better techniques available.

That said, I've seen a lot of system-level code with what is best described as
excessive error checking, usually because it's so catastrophic when
system software fails.  Embedded looks like this a lot too. I've written
embedded routines where error checking consumed 80% of the code,
and then had to make the whole thing still fit within a strictly defined
time allocation.

> In one C routine, I was able to compress it down from 24 lines to one line
> (although it does have three expressions :-).  A lot of my code expansion
> over the original is due to comments and debugging artifacts as well as a
> bit of still emulating C code where I don't totally grok the C code's
> intent.
----
You can always post to this list with C questions (or any other language for that matter)
There's bound to be an expert on the list who'd be happy to offer an answer or suggestion.

> 
> 	-Paul
> 
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