Re: bind fallback

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 09:18 AM 8/28/2006, Michael B Allen wrote:
>On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:58:38 +0200 (CEST)
>"Pierangelo Masarati" <ando@sys-net.it> wrote:
>
>> >> deprecated), and it's intended to be the opposite of ldap_initialize(3)
>> >> (formerly, ldap_init(3), now deprecated).  The name might sound
>> >> misleading; it comes from draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-c-api.
>> >
>> > Funny the latest draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-c-api-xxx.txt from webcvs has
>> > no mention of ldap_initialize(3). Is this really portable? Are these
>> > functions ok to use with 2.2?
>> 
>> Yes.  The draft is very old and its design is a bit outdated.  OpenLDAP
>> implements the calls in the draft, but most of them are deprecated in 2.3
>> and may no longer be supported in the future.  OpenLDAP provides valid
>> alternatives to deprecated code.  Anything but ldap_initialize() should be
>> used to initialize a connection, for example.  It has been around for a
>> long time (2.something, possibly 2.0).  I don't know about portability
>> with respect to other implementors (and I don't want to).
>
>So what you're saying is that OpenLDAP will not be following industry
>accepted standard APIs and may even remove functionality wrt those
>standard APIs?

doc/drafts/README:
  Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) are working documents of the Internet
  Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, its working groups, and
  individual contributors.

  I-Ds are only valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated,
  replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time.  It is
  inappropriate to use I-Ds as reference material or to cite them
  other than as "work in progress."

  The OpenLDAP Project maintains copies of I-D for which we find
  interesting.  Existance here does not necessarily imply any support
  nor any plans to support for the I-D.  The I-Ds found in this
  directory may be stale, expired, or otherwise out of date.

  Please go to <http://www.ietf.org/> for latest revisions (and
  status).

The first two paragraphs you'll find in all I-Ds.  If you check
the IETF and/or the RFC Editor for status, you'll find that this
work stopped years ago without production of a standard track
document.  That is, there is no "industry accepted standard"
LDAP C API.

Developers of LDAP clients in C should pick an LDAP C library
to use that is, itself, portable.  For instance, OpenLDAP's
LDAP C library or Mozilla's LDAP C library.

>> In general, fixing memory leaks in obsolete code sounds like a waste of
>> time.
>
>Understandable.
>
>Thanks,
>Mike