[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Top]

RE: BER version?

The functionality of the BER library hasn't changed much in the past 3-4
years. One or two things have been added to it, but I'm not aware of any
feature of it 4 years ago that isn't still supported today. Aside from bug
fixes, the version that you use is pretty irrelevant, the features and
functions you use today should just keep on working.

Is anything future-proof?

liblber and libldap mainly implement the old LDAPv2 C API and much of the
draft LDAPv3 C API (and the draft has expired). From a number of standpoints,
this API is abominable. If I had the time, I would trash the whole thing and
start over.

I haven't had the time. But I do cling to the notion that somewhere down the
line, I'll get to it, and there will be a future version of OpenLDAP that
completely breaks from the rubbish that weighs it down today.

In the meantime, we make incremental improvements here and there to allow us
to accomplish smaller objectives. A lot of these changes are undocumented and
adhere to no published standards. (For example, ldap_get_attribute_ber, which
I added to libldap in 2.1.5, which parses an entry in linear time instead of
N^2 time as the C API functions do.) Whether they will ever get documented or
standardized is an open question, I'm thinking "maybe" because it would be
better to start a new spec from scratch, rather than keep accomodating the
anti-optimal "design" (using the word loosely) that exists today.

  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org
> [mailto:owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org]On Behalf Of James Halpin

> Hi,
>
> Could somebody please tell me how I would determine the version of the
> OpenLDAP BER library I am using (only the source code exists, no build
> scripts etc...). Could I match a file version to a library
> version and then
> to the OpenLDAP version? Also is the BER library future-proof, i.e.
> compatible with future version of OpenLDAP code (servers).
>
> Regards,
>
> James.
>