Re: IPv6 patch

Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:
> If we cleanly split the Postgres-specific code from the stuff that's
> been imported from BIND, shouldn't it be easy to import new versions,
> and thus get IPv6 support for free?

IIRC, the issue was that we'd painfully hammered out a set of preferred
I/O behaviors for the inet and cidr datatypes, and then hacked up the
code we'd imported from BIND to make it happen.  Paul Vixie sent in a
patch that replaced the imported code with v6-aware BIND code ---
thereby reverting those painfully-agreed-to patches.  So it got
rejected.

I have no problem with restructuring our I/O behavior as wrappers around
the pristine BIND routines; although privately I doubt it's worth the
trouble.  The really interesting part of upgrading to v6 inet support is
going to be obtaining a consensus on how our current I/O behaviors should
translate to v6 addresses.  Once we have that, I suspect that slash-and-
burn mods on the BIND code will again be the way to go ;-).  It's not
like v6 is going to be replaced in the foreseeable future.
        regards, tom lane