Re: [PATCH] support alternate backends for the passwd and group dbs

[M Farkas-Dyck <strake888@gmail.com>]

On 23/02/2015, Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org> wrote:
> There were multiple discussions of how to support alternate backends
> in the past, and the main two candidates were a new text-based
> protocol over a unix socket that returns the result in passwd/group
> file form, and repurposing nscd protocol. While I originally preferred
> the former, using nscd has the advantage that, on existing glibc
> systems with non-default (possibly even custom nss modules) backends,
> everything works out of the box. Using a new protocol/new daemon would
> require installing that daemon before any musl-linked binaries could
> lookup users/groups, and would require significant custom glue to
> integrate with custom site-local backends.

For nonstatic non-nsc backends, one could alternately have files in
question on synthetic filesystem, e.g. 9p, so backend program would
simply be synthetic filesystem server and musl wouldn't need to care.