Why I Love Open Source and Github
A lot of the development work I do requires me to modify DNS entries to temporarly change where something resolves. For a while I just would edit my /etc/hosts file. This was ok for a while, but was kind of a pain. One day while making some changes to Passenger Preference Pane, I came across the OS X command dscl. The manual describes it as:
Directory Service command line utility:
dscl is a general-purpose utility for operating on Directory Service directory nodes. Its commands allow one to create, read, and manage Directory Service data. If invoked without any commands, dscl runs in an interactive mode, reading commands from standard input. Interactive processing is terminated by the quit command. Leading dashes (“-“) are optional for all com- mands.
In other words, it allows you to add DNS entries without the need to modify your /etc/hosts file. The syntax isn’t very straightforward and leaves a lot to be desired. My first instinct was to do a google search for a management utility. That’s when I came across Ghost. Ghost has very simple syntax:
$ ghost add mydevsite.local
[Adding] mydevsite.local -> 127.0.0.1
$ ghost add staging-server.local 67.207.136.164
[Adding] staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164
$ ghost list
Listing 2 host(s):
mydevsite.local -> 127.0.0.1
staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164
$ ghost delete mydevsite.local
[Deleting] mydevsite.local
$ ghost list
Listing 1 host(s):
staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164
$ ghost modify staging-server.local 64.233.167.99
[Modifying] staging-server.local -> 64.233.167.99
$ ghost list
Listing 1 host(s):
staging-server.local -> 64.233.167.99
$ ghost export > some_file
$ ghost empty
[Emptying] Done.
$ ghost list
Listing 0 host(s):
$ ghost import some_file
[Adding] staging-server.local -> 64.233.167.99
$ ghost list
Listing 1 host(s):
staging-server.local -> 64.233.167.99
Perfect! This has been a utility I use at least once a week. The other day, I found myself needing to remove a bunch of DNS entries I added for testing purposes. There was no built in way to remove entries in bulk. Sure, I could just do a bash for loop and call it day, but that seemed selfish. So what did I do? I forked it on github, added the delete_matching method (with tests), and sent a pull request to bjeanes. It was quickly accpeted, merged, and pushed to gemcutter. It was almost too easy!
$ ghost delete_matching test
[Deleting] test2.local
[Deleting] test.local
Posted 18 Jan 2010 by jmazzi