Simple C implementation of RFC-6555 (Happy Eyeballs)

This is an implementation of the Happy Eyeballs algorithm from rfc6555.

The aim is to provide a (almost) drop-in replacement to the standard connect(3) system call, so it can be used in the Example loop from getaddrinfo(3), for ease of integration in existing projects.

Get it

The authoritative source for this project can be found here, but a mirror is maintained in sync on GitHub. You can clone the latest version with either

git clone https://scm.narf.ssji.net/git/happy-eyeballs-c

or

git clone https://github.com/shtrom/happy-eyeballs-c

Try it

Just run

make test

to build and run various combinations of tests (pay attention to the names of the binaries, as well as the amount of time elapsed).

Use it

As stated above, the aim is to have to make as few changes as possible in the Example GAI loop. Here's a diff between gai.c and happy.c at the time of this writing.

--- gai.c	2019-07-10 21:39:59.827667939 +1000
+++ happy.c	2019-07-12 17:15:06.288931156 +1000
@@ -12,10 +12,13 @@
 #include <netdb.h>
 #include <unistd.h>
 
+#include "rfc6555.h"
+
 int connect_host(char *host, char *service) {
 	struct addrinfo hints;
 	struct addrinfo *result, *rp;
 	int sfd, s;
+	rfc6555_ctx *ctx;
 
 	memset(&hints, 0, sizeof(struct addrinfo));
 	hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC;    /* Allow IPv4 or IPv6 */
@@ -34,6 +37,9 @@
 	   If socket(2) (or connect(2)) fails, we (close the socket
 	   and) try the next address. */
 
+	rfc6555_reorder(result);
+	ctx = rfc6555_context_create();
+
 	for (rp = result; rp != NULL; rp = rp->ai_next) {
 		fprintf(stderr, "connecting using rp %p (%s, af %d) ...",
 				rp,
@@ -44,13 +50,13 @@
 		if (sfd == -1)
 			continue;
 
-		if (connect(sfd, rp->ai_addr, rp->ai_addrlen) != -1)
+		if ((sfd = rfc6555_connect(ctx, sfd, &rp)) != -1)
 			break;                  /* Success */
 
 		fprintf(stderr, " failed!\n");
 		perror("error: connecting: ");
-		close(sfd);
 	}
+	rfc6555_context_destroy(ctx);
 
 	if (rp == NULL) {               /* No address succeeded */
 		fprintf(stderr, "failed! (last attempt)\n");

TODO

• Review and (maybe) implement rfc8305;
• Make this an actual library with autoconf and all.

Authors

This implementation:

• Olivier Mehani shtrom@ssji.net, 2019

The getaddrinfo(3) Example code:

• Sam Varshavchik mrsam@courier-mta.com, 2000
• Ulrich Drepper drepper@redhat.com, 2006
• Michael Kerrisk mtk.manpages@gmail.com, 2007, 2008

Licenses

The drop-in file and the accompanying headers are under LGPL-3.0-or-later; the rest is under GPL-3.0-or-later, except for the Example code from getaddrinfo(3), for which terms can be found at gai-example-license.