Bind within src-contrib

[Remko Lodder]

Johnson David wrote:
> From: Frank Laszlo [mailto:laszlof at tvog.net]
> 
> 
>>How would you like a system with no host(1), dig(1), or nslookup(1)? I 
>>personally consider these tools essential for a freebsd system.
> 
> 
> Are these utilities used anywhere else in FreeBSD, such as the startup
> scripts? Are they something required by the vast majority of users? If not,
> I wouldn't consider them "essential". That doesn't mean I would move them to
> ports, as there's a lot of other non-essential software in the base system
> (biff, indent, etc.).
> 
> David

Imo this discussion does not belong here but on hackers@
so i changed the CC line for that.

I will only reply on the part: "not having host, dig and nslookup
available", since there might be other tools that can do the
resolving part as well which i do not currently know.

A system without resolver libraries and applications simply is not
maintainable by default. If you have no resolving applications in your
base system you will not be able to install a port or anything at all
that requires remote access. Why? because your machine cannot map the
www.freebsd.org host (example) to an ip address. Without being able to
do so, it simply cannot find the ip address of the host where the
files might live resulting in a failre to obtain the files. And well
without files it will be difficult to install something...

I hope this helps a bit in why resolving capabilities are needed in the
base system.

-- 
Kind regards,

      Remko Lodder         ** remko at elvandar.org
      FreeBSD              ** remko at FreeBSD.org
      Reporter DSINET      ** remko at DSINet.org