Help wanted: Linking to libbind9 on Ubuntu Linux

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <20180320205558.23ld7b2orcfkyg4o at mycre.ws>, 
Robert Edmonds <edmonds at mycre.ws> wrote:

>Rick Dicaire wrote:
>> For libbind9, https://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/libbind9-90
>
>You would also need the ".so" symlink in order to link with -lbind9,
>which is in this package:
>https://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/libbind-dev. This package is
>confusingly named, though, it should probably have been named
>libbind9-dev. It's unrelated to the original "libbind"
>(https://www.isc.org/downloads/libbind/).

That all quite certainly *is* bloody confusing.

Firstly, I wish I understood the wisdom of the Linux/Ubuntu gods,
specifically when they elected to place some files that *seem* like
the library I was looking for into the /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
directory but then also deciding to leave out the additional(.so)
symlink necessary to actually use the bloody things (and putting
that instead into some optional package that needs to be installed
separately).

Second, I wish I undrstood your comment that the the files that appear
on my Ubuntu system and whose names begin with "libbind9" are "unrelated"
to the "real thing" (ISC) library of the same name.

I suppose that when I grow up I will understand all these things, but
right now it is all bloody preplexing.

Not that any of this is in any way ISC's fault.  It looks to me as if
the Linux people just may have some funny ideas about how to organize
things.

>However, note that there's also a proposal to get rid of the public
>BIND9 libraries and turn these into private APIs:
>
>https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/bind9/issues/88

Oh vey!  So, I guess that, going forward, it will be a Good Thing if I
try to make sure that my code will plug-and-play alright with the
Linux libresolv, as there may be no other choice on that platform in
the future... unless I really want to code up the routines I want myself
from scratch.  (I certainly could do that, if necessary.  I'm not even
using that much out of the library, as I do my own packet parsing and
compression.  I'd just prefer not to.)