Deprecation notice force BIND 9.20+: "rrset-order fixed" and "sortlist"

[Ondřej Surý]

Hello,

In line with ISC's deprecation policy, I am notifying the mailing list
of our intent to deprecate the "sortlist" options and a value "fixed"
for "rrset-order" option.

These options allow to specify a on order of the resource records
in the responses.

The "fixed" value for "rrset-order" option will make named to record
the order the records are defined in the zone file and it's disabled at
the compile time because it blows up memory use. Relying on the
order of the resource records in the DNS responses has been always
wrong, but we are still keeping the "rrset-order" option, but please
don't use it.

The "sortlist" option allows to define a complicated rules when and
how to reorder the resource records in the responses. The same
caveats as with the "rrset-order" apply - relying on any specific
order of resource records in the DNS responses is wrong.

We are not aware of any other (major) DNS server that would have
similar behaviour as this was never specified in the DNS protocol.
If you know of any software or hardware relying on any specific
order of the resource records in the DNS messages, it needs to
be reported as a bug to the respective vendor.

They will be deprecated as of BIND 9.20 and removed in BIND 9.22.

Cheers,
--
Ondřej Surý (He/Him)
ondrej at isc.org

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