[Caml-list] IPv6 zone-id

["Vincent B." <vb@luminar.eu.org>]

Hi,

The Unix module does not make possible to use IPv6 link-local
addresses.

This is due to the fact that the "sockaddr" type in Unix is not as
complete as its C counterpart, especially it lacks zone-id information
that is required to use such addresses.

Since I needed such features, I started writing a library
(http://github.com/vbmithr/ocaml-sockopt), unfortunately, given that
every networking piece of code written in OCaml use the primitives of
the Unix module, I would have to patch all networking code I want to
use which is not very convenient.

So I'm in the process of writing a patch for OCaml and I'm taking the
approach of extending the sockaddr type like this:

type sockaddr_raw (* a real struct sockaddr *)

type sockaddr =
  ADDR_UNIX of string
| ADDR_INET of inet_addr * int
| ADDR_RAW of sockaddr_raw

And then upgrading all the Unix code that uses type sockaddr.

This approach seems to me the most conservative towards existing
code. Should I continue in this direction or this design is not the
optimal one ?

Cheers,

Vincent