Re: legacy ldap?

Daniel Stenberg via curl-library wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Dec 2025, Patrick Monnerat via curl-library wrote:
> 
>>> If so, I'm curious to learn more on why and on what system(s).
>>
>> Yes: on OS/400 ILE. I do not have any knowledge of an OpenLDAP port to this platform.
> 
> Do you actually use it on that platform or are you just building for it? We build it in CI as well it turns out.
> 
>> I don't use Windows myself for about 9 years, but at this time there was an OS-native support for LDAP that was usable with this code.
> 
> WinLDAP exists and that code builds to use it. But I don't know of anyone that *uses* it.
> 
>> BTW: I don't think it's a "legacy" LDAP. I rather take it as an alternative, just like we have more than a single ssh library support.
> 
> I use the term legacy for this because this is the old, ancient even, way to do LDAP. There's virtually no public documentation to be found online how this API
> is supposed to work and the API is "lacking". It feels like yet another one of those forgotten corners of the world that maybe we rather not stir up too much...
> 
> A major challenge trying to find docs is that OpenLDAP has mostly the same function names, so OpenLDAP search results easily shadow the legacy details.
> 

OpenLDAP has the same function names because the LDAP API is defined in RFC1823.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1823

Of course that API was published for LDAPv2 and OpenLDAP has extended a lot beyond that since LDAPv3 came around.

> Apple deprecated "legacy LDAP" in 2013, but it still seemingly works.


-- 
  -- Howard Chu
  CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/
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