Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

medium.engineering

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 95 posts

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

ekimekim wrote: post #50

Having read https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761 , I have a use-case which I've seen often but doesn't seem to be covered: What TLD should I use for internal, production domains? ie. names that are only resolvable within my network, but are definitely not "test" domains and calling them .test would generate confusion. Mostly I tend to see companies either inventing an unregistered TLD, often using their own company na…

> What TLD should I use for internal, production domains?

The currently safe way is to use a public domain that you own (you could use a distinct subdomain for this, which is not publicly exposed but which is in DNS on your internal network; e.g., intranet.example.com if you own example.com); as you note, this gives a long full domain.

> Mostly I tend to see companies either inventing an unregistered TLD, often using their own company name, or they use ".local", which can cause issues - some systems treat this name specially.

“.local” is a reserved domain with special semantics, see RFC 6762.

> Ideally I'd like to see a ".private" or ".internal" TLD recognised as special-use under the same semantics as ".test".

I'm kind of surprised that we haven't seen an RFC gain acceptance for this already, but I expect something like this will happen and be registered with the IANA special use domains registry.

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#62

Post by kijeda »

gruez wrote: post #54
cls59 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also, the folks at medium made that assumption long after RFC 2606 had established a "right answer" for which tld to use when testing.

i think i wasn't being clear with my initial comment. it's a "fair assumption" in the same way that it's a fair assumption that emails can be validated with the regex [a-zA-Z0-9\.]+@[a-zA-Z0-9]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+ sure, it breaks for gmail aliases (with +), isn't RFC compliant, and the proper regex is a google search away, but it's understandable why that was chosen. same with .dev domains. yeah, you probably should have…

These don't strike me as comparable scenarios.

In the case of .dev, it didn't even appear in the weeds of usage when the DNS root servers were measured for traffic to identify potential new TLDs usage conflicts in the real world (e.g. https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/name-collision-0... p22). Even if .dev were in significant usage, that traffic was not reaching the domain name system. The complaint seems to be fundamentally to be about the pre-loaded configuration of Chrome, not the DNS.

In the case of your regex, it would breaks millions of production domains in used today and fail in a wide variety of scenarios. It is only understandable in the context of someone who hasn't done any cursory research into the topic.

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#63

Post by asdgkknio »

OskarS wrote: post #27

I had no idea you could buy gTLDs for internal company use. That’s outrageous, and ICANN should have rejected the application. I don’t mind the idea behind gTLDs, but the while thing has been handled pretty poorly.

Especially something as generic as .dev. I could possibly see Google having a legitimate claim to a .google TLD, but not something like .dev that is in no way limited to Google.

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#64

Post by grawprog »

Kalium wrote: post #30
grawprog wrote: post #29

As much as I agree with not using a public TLD as a dev environment, why the fuck was google allowed to register and privately secure not one but several domains for their own private use? Fuck them. That shouldn't have been allowed, especially for a TLD that's well known to be heavily used. I really dislike allowing domains to be used in such a way. It seems extremely short sighted.

Anyone is allowed to buy any gTLD for any use. As a result, Google was allowed to buy .dev. They then chose to use it for internal use only. Unfortunately, the time to oppose this was long ago when gTLDs were first being debated...

So I'm not allowed to disagree with something just because it happened a while ago? I was against it then because of exactly this kind of thing happening. My opinion hasn't changed. But, I guess it should because you say so right?

I see this kind of attitude a lot when it comes to technology "Oh it's already happened just accept it" Or "It's the way everything is so just go along with it"

I'm getting fairly sick of being told I shouldn't disagree with or be against something because"that's the way it is"

Since when has technology ever been about accepting things the way they are? The whole reason we even have an internet is because people decided the way things were weren't good enough.

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#65

Post by mindcrime »

peterwwillis wrote: post #58
mindcrime wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's locking literally every individual and business out of a "development" domain, solely for one corporation's for-profit use. And? What entitles any of us to use that domain? And as far as that goes, you can, as I understand it, still use that tld, since your local DNS resolver or hosts file can always override how hosts are resolved in there. The only real issue is if you hit the specific issue where a change in…

> What entitles any of us to use that domain? You're right. I didn't pay for it, so I'm not entitled to get to use it. Just because there is only one internet, and only one top level domain namespace, and just because I don't have $150,000, does not entitle me to get to use some part of the internet in the same way as a single corporation with a lot of money. What entitles anyone to use the internet? I don't pay for…

You're right. I didn't pay for it, so I'm not entitled to get to use it.

Correct. So what was the point of the rest of your nonsensical rambling? Or do you have some other explanation of why you're entitled to you use that specific tld namespace? You can't just use arbitrary domains that you don't own, why should tld's be any different especially given the advent of gtld's which radically expanded the namespace?

You're also ignoring that that that you can still use .dev. The case where Google's ownership of it prevents you from using it (for internal use anyway) is a very specific, limited scenario.

does not entitle me to get to use some part of the internet in the same way as a single corporation with a lot of money

Nothing about this prevents you from using any part of the Internet. At worst it restricts, ever so slightly, the way you can name your resources. But there have always been restrictions on how you can name your resources.

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#66

Post by TheDong »

sp332 wrote: post #57
TheDong wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for internal company use. There are no gTLDs intended only for internal company use. There are many that are intended for only a single companyto use them, though externally. For example, the .americanexpress gtld ( https://www.nic.americanexpress/ ) will only provide domains to entities affiliated with american express. Same with .dodge, and .google, and many many others. ICANN handled this quite well -- they let…

But .dev is being used only internally, according to the article.

The article quoted Google's application, which only claims private registration, and then makes wrong assumption's about google's intended use of it. The article's wrong, or used internal to only mean "closed registration".

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#68

Post by jerf »

peterwwillis wrote: post #36
jerf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is that monopolistic behaviour?" No. Acquiring the TLD has nothing to do with any monopoly, so it's just a browser decision made by Chrome, and it isn't locking anybody out of any markets. It's also technically not even a change to the status quo. Beforehand, you weren't supposed to be using .dev like that. As the article says, you should have been using .test or .invalid. After Google's actions, you still shouldn't…

It's locking literally every individual and business out of a "development" domain, solely for one corporation's for-profit use. Solely to associate Google with development, over any other corporation in the world. This is like Ford registering ".car" gTLD for themselves (although actually worse). > It's also technically not even a change to the status quo. If it wasn't a change to the status quo, they would have jus…

"It's locking literally every individual and business out of a "development" domain, solely for one corporation's for-profit use. Solely to associate Google with development, over any other corporation in the world."

You have answered the question "Was this selfish behavior?" or "Was this an asshole move?", with an answer I agree with. But that was not the question. The question was whether this was monopolistic behavior. The answer is no. As far as I know, several other TLDs have been similarly locked down by companies with no claim to monopoly power in any industry, which pretty much proves it's not related to monopoly power.

Re: The days of .dev domains for testing code are over

#70

Post by reaperducer »

If Google is only using .dev internally, and there won't be any public .dev domains, then who cares? As long as my hosts file routes .dev to the proper localhost nooks and crannies, nothing changes.

Unless you've bound yourself to Big G's browser. We only use that for last-minute rendering tests because management doesn't trust it not to leak info back to Mountain View.

Also, does Medium have a minimum word requirement? For some reason Medium articles always seem unnecessarily extra large.

Post reply on HN