djb "friends"

In this section we introduce several other programmers who have found inspiration and methodology in the work of Daniel Bernstein.

Throughout this site we refer to these developers as djb "friends". This is mainly in the sense they have substantially embraced fundamental principles of djb software, adapting them in significant measure for their own projects. By aligning themselves in some way with djb, each is acknowledging an aspiration to meet or surpass the rigorous standards and high quality of djb's own products.

Otherwise, we don't pretend to know anything about anyone's personal associations, or even if they are really very friendly!

What is important here is that the contributions of these "friends" has significantly enriched and extended the scope, currency, and utility of the djb way.

William Baxter has produced a boatload of work designed for the djb way; see http://www.superscript.com/software.html for the current catalogue of his projects.

Of particular significance are:

• ucspi-ssl, a drop-in replacement for ucspi-tcp providing the slickest secure socket solution for many djb services

• shttpd, a suite of special-purpose web servers designed to complement a publicfile installation

• qtools, collection of useful utilities for qmail

• djblib, library source code extracted from all djb projects, for programmers seeking access to the complete pristine original code for their own development

Laurent Bercot has produced a high-quality, easily accessible, general-purpose djb-like library for programmers to use in their projects. It is well-documented and committed to the public domain. See http://www.skarnet.org/software/skalibs/index.html for more information.

See also http://www.skarnet.org/software/ for a listing of his other projects. These include ucspilogd, a replacement for syslogd.

Bruce Guenter is one of the most prolific of the djb "friends" reviewed here, providing numerous useful packages; see his homepage for a current listing.

Some of the most popular include:

• syncdir, the "syncdir fix" for qmail on Linux filesystems

• mailfront, a suite of pop3 and smtp replacements (including SMTP authentication) for a qmail installation

• vmailmgr, a qmail add-on for sites serving large numbers of "virtual users" and domains

• bglibs, a general purpose, djb-inspired programming library

Paul Jarc is another djb "friend" whose contributions include:

• runwhen, provides utilities to run programs at certain times

• "Running svscan as process 1", describes how to replace init with daemontools svscan

Felix von Leitner may be best known on the 'net for his dietlibc project for Linux, a complete, minimal replacement for the GNU Standard C library (glibc). The precursor to this work can be found in his libowfat library, a re-worked and much enhanced version of djb's public domain libraries. libowfat (link with -lowfat) is well-documented and provides an excellent resource for those wanting to program "the djb way" with a GPL (unfortunately not LGPL) library.

Felix also offers libdjb, a collection of all Bernstein's public domain library code in a single convenient package. (For completeness, also get Chris Wilke's patches to this library at http://ladro.com/libdjb/instructions.html, which add a couple of missing files to the set.)

Felix offers tons of other useful djb stuff, including libraries, applications, patches and documentation. A few highlights:

• fnord, a feature-full web server to run under tcpserver, as an alternative to publicfile

• minit, a svscan replacement with additional features, designed as a complete replacement for init.

• patches for ucspi-tcp and djbdns, providing IPv6 support that djb's packages are currently lacking

Uwe Ohse offers a substantial collection of interesting software projects for the djb explorer:

• uschedule, a secure scheduling service, designed as an alternative to cron

• utftpd, a TFTP server; now you don't need to run inetd for anything

• dyndb, a supplement for the cdb database library

• iodb, the basic idea of UCSPI extended to cover UDP domain sockets, etc.

There's a whole lot more here; in the coming months we hope to give Uwe's work much better coverage.

Gerrit Pape is developing some excellent resources:

• runit, a daemontools replacement, with additional features to permit replacement of init

• ipsvd, an ucspi-tcp replacement with several additional features, including services using unix domain sockets

• socklog, a replacement for syslogd

• http://smarden.org/pape/djb/, other resources and manpages for djb packages

Gerrit's packages are released under a BSD-style license, providing a useful alternative for those building embedded systems. We also note that Gerrit uses djb's public-domain libraries verbatim. This provides programmers with another opportunity to freely access djb source code for their own projects.