Maintenance Blog

NLnet Labs has been maintaining the perl Net::DNS and Net::DNS::SEC packages for more then seven years. Traditionally people who wanted to discuss Net::DNS used RT at cpan or directly mailed the maintainer(s).

While Net::DNS and Net::DNS::SEC are libraries that are supported by NLnet Labs, they also benefit from significant community contribution and collaboration.

Until now, there was no official platform for Net::DNS users to talk to each other and share experiences. About time to set this up; ie. a mailing-list for Net::DNS users.

If you use Net::DNS and Net::DNS::SEC and wish to discuss it with other users (and with us), please subscribe to our list on the webpage:

• https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/mailman/listinfo/net-dns-users

or subscribe by sending an email to net-dns-users-request@nlnetlabs.nl with the word `subscribe’ in the subject or body.

Release 0.69/0.70 contained major architectural modifications enabling IDN support and the enrichment of the text, mailbox and domainname rdata fields. The new architecture also addressed some less visible improvements on the internal workings of Net::DNS (providing clearer separation of concerns and better protected module-interfaces.)

We have done our utmost best to introduce architectural changes as gradually and incrementally as possible in the hope to detect and resolve issues quickly. Nonetheless there is a point were all the pieces have to come together. For our architectural refactoring with Net::DNS this was in the previous version 0.69/0.70.

As a result, we have had a bigger number of critical bugs then normally after release. Release 0.71 has those resolved.

One issue that stands out is SpamAssassins update mechanism for spam-rule datasets to silently fail with Net::DNS 0.69/0.70. Spamassassin expected the rdatastr method of TXT rrs to return unconditionally quoted strings. Release 0.69/0.70 returned those conditionally in accordance with RFC 1035 section 5.1.

To resolve we agreed with SpamAssassin developers that Net::DNS 0.71 will have a temporary workaround that returns unconditionally quoted rdata fields again. This workaround will be reverted after SpamAssassin has released a version with the problem resolved.
It is already fixed in the SpamAssassin repository.

For a complete list of changes and bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

Support for NID, L32, L64, and LP (RFC6742) was accidentally missing from release 0.69. Net::DNS 0.70 has it included. Besides that it is exactly the same as release 0.69.

For a complete list of changes and bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

I am pleased to announce that version 0.69 of Net::DNS is now available.

Besides many bug fixes this release now employs the architectural modifications enabling IDN support that were prepared for since 0.67.  Owner names and domain name rdata fields may now be given in Unicode whereupon they will automatically be converted to IDN A-labels.

Other rdata field types have also been enriched:

• Rdata fields containing text may now also be provided in Unicode.
• Rdata fields referring to mailboxes may now be given in RFC822 format;
  i.e. user@domain or name <user@domain>
• The rdata fields of the LOC resource record are now specified in actual (decimal) degrees, minutes and seconds.

Luis Muñoz has donated his Net::DNS::ZoneFile module. It is now included in the Net::DNS package.  Thank you Luis.  Net::DNS::ZoneFile now also benefits from the architectural improvements so that zone files read by the Net::DNS::ZoneFile module may contain Unicode in owner names and domain name rdata fields and the other rdata field type enrichments.

Other notable modifications in the interface are:

• Header extensions provided by the EDNS0 OPT resource record are now  accessible transparently through the $packet‐>header interface. This includes the DO flag, extended response codes and UDP packet size.
• Packet decoding errors are now collected in the $@ ($EVAL_ERROR)  variable.  Before the error message was returned in the second item of  the array returned when construction a Net::DNS::Packet in array  context.  Now that second argument contains the number of octets  successfully decoded.
  This makes packet decoding more robust and gives more refined control  over the decoding process.
• The DNS parameters are now also provided in a separate module Net::DNS::Parameters.

Many thanks to Dick Franks who contributed all of the architectural improvements just described.

For a complete list of changes and bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

I am pleased to announce version 0.68 of Net::DNS.

Besides a few bugfixes, the most prominent enhancements are:

• support for Internationalized Domain Names in queries
• two new modules that will introduce specific functionality for Mailbox RDATA fields and Text RDATA fields in the future

For a complete list of changes and bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

We have a release candidate for the upcoming 0.68. This release contains a few bugfixes, but most importantly introduces the possibility to query for Internationalized Domain Names.

For a complete list of changes and bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

Please let us know if anything is wrong. If all is well, the 0.68 release will follow next week.

27-01-2012: Now the Mailbox.pm and Text.pm modules are actually included!

I am proud to announce the long awaited Net::DNS version 0.67 release. It has been almost two years since the last release. As may be expected in such a long time interval, the amount of bug-fixes and other changes is significant. Future version will be released more frequently.

Besides the code-tidying,  spelling and bug-fixes, a few enhancements and new features have been added:

• A modular system for managing serial numbers in SOA records from Dick Franks
• Major rework of the experimental Net::DNS::Domain and the addition of Net::DNS::DomainName that pave the road towards handling of character encodings and IDN from Dick Franks.
• Major rework of the build system:
  • All user interaction is replaced by command line options
  • Online tests are non-fatal by default
  • Prefer the Cygwin codepath for Cygwin builds, except for updates of Cygwin installations that already use the Win32 codepath

For a complete list of changes and the numerous bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

Begin this year I received the responsibility to handle bug reports, enhancement and feature requests for Net::DNS and prepare a new release.   Now finally I have a release candidate for the upcoming 0.67 release ready.  The last release was from December 2009, almost two years ago. As may be expected in such a long time interval, the amount of bug-fixes and other changes is significant.  It is my intention (and promise) to release way more frequently from now on.

Some prominent enhancements and new features are:

• A modular system for managing serial numbers in SOA records from Dick Franks
• Major rework of the experimental Net::DNS::Domain and the addition of Net::DNS::DomainName that pave the road towards handling of character encodings and IDN from Dick Franks.
• Major rework of the build system:
  • All user interaction is replaced by command line options
  • Online tests are non-fatal by default
  • Prefer the Cygwin codepath for Cygwin builds, except for updates of Cygwin installations that already use the Win32 codepath

For a complete list of changes and the numerous bugfixes see the CHANGES file.

Please let us know if anything is wrong. If all is well, the 0.67 release will follow next week.

28-10-2011: Some initial fixes are in release candidate 4:

31-10-2011: The last two fixes…:

02-11-2011: The final last fixes…:

— Willem Toorop

Net::DNS version 0.66 has just been released

In addition to fixing a number of bugs the following main features where added:

• Support for the DHCID, KX and HIP RR
• Truncation support in Net::DNS::Packet used by Net::DNS::Nameserver
  TAKE CARE:
  this feature may cause unexpected behavior for your nameservers (packets on the wire may have different content than you intended). The feature be turned off by setting Truncate to 0 during the creation of the nameserver.
  my $ns = Net::DNS::Nameserver->new(
  Truncate => 0,
  );
• Addition of Net::DNS::Domain as a start towards a more structured handling of domain names. At this moment the Net::DNS::Domain class is only included to expose it to the various test environments that are available. The Net::DNS::Domain class and its methods are subject to name and functionality changes.