localdns

A DNS for local development. Editing hosts file to add and remove host names for local development is no longer needed.

localdns is designed to respond to DNS queries for all subdomains of the specified top-level domain with localhost address. Since it supports both IPv4 and IPv6, localdns will respond accordingly to, i.e., it will respond to DNS A queries with 127.0.0.1 and AAAA queries with ::1.

localdns also can be used as a DNS proxy. This feature is specially useful in Windows since default Windows DNS's client does not query a secondary DNS before a 15 minute timeout.

Supports Linux, Mac OSX and Windows! \o/

Installation

General

Download and put the binary somewhere in your path.

Archlinux (AUR package)

yaourt -S localdns

Installing using yaourt also creates a systemd service: localdns.service.

Mac OSX (Homebrew)

brew tap jweslley/formulae
brew install localdns

Installing using brew creates a plist file to launches localdns via launchd and create a custom resolver to .dev top-level domains.

From source

git clone git://github.com/jweslley/localdns.git
cd localdns
make build

Usage

After installed, running localdns is straightforward, just run:

localdns

For more command options, run localdns -h:

-tld="dev": Top-level domain to resolve to localhost
-port=5353: DNS's port
-ttl=600: DNS's TTL (Time to live)
-debug: enable verbose logging

-proxy: Enable proxy mode. comma-separated list of DNS servers to send queries for. Example: 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4
-timeout=2s: when acting as proxy, timeout for dial, write and read.
-expire=10m: when acting as proxy, cache expiration time.
-cache=65536: when acting as proxy, the cache size.

In Windows, is recommended to enable the proxy mode. For example, run:

localdns -proxy 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

Test usage

You can use dig, drill or other tool to run queries against your localdns instance.

Executing a query using drill:

drill @localhost -p 5353 myapp.dev

Outputs:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, rcode: NOERROR, id: 21160
;; flags: qr rd ; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;; myapp.dev.   IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
myapp.dev.      600     IN      A       127.0.0.1

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:

;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: ::1
;; WHEN: Thu May 14 12:44:43 2015
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 52

Bugs and Feedback

If you discover any bugs or have some idea, feel free to create an issue on GitHub:

https://github.com/jweslley/localdns/issues

License

MIT license. Copyright (c) 2015 Jonhnny Weslley http://jonhnnyweslley.net

See the LICENSE file provided with the source distribution for full details.