Hi everyone,<br><br>we&#39;ve been very busy for the last couple months, and I&#39;m glad to let you know,<br>that the Knot DNS v1.3.0 first release candidate is finally out!<br>This is a feature-full release, packing a lot of new stuff and improvements.<br>

The major change since 1.2.0 is the zone compilation, which is now deprecated and<br>zone files are parsed directly on startup. This was made possible with the new zone file parser,<br>which is neck to neck in terms of speed with whole parsing to loading a precompiled zone.<br>

So no more &#39;compile&#39; steps.<br><br>Configuration file is also improved with the handy &#39;group&#39; keyword, that allows you to<br>make groups of remotes and also a support to include another part of config file.<br>

This is useful for example if you want to store keys elsewhere.<br>We also now support queries to pseudo CH zone (RFC4892 style), so that is configurable<br>as well (we support identity, version and hostname).<br><br>On the backend part, we have overhauled several internal structures to lower memory<br>

consumption and improved speed and scheduling of zone transfers. Log messages for<br>those are improved as well, giving a more verbose overview of what was transferred,<br>which serial and how long. Apart from that, there are a lot of smaller performance<br>

<div>improvements, revamped build system and a lot of small details.</div><div>For example zone files written out on slave contain a source address, time and other</div><div>useful information. See NEWS or gitlog for more details.<br>

</div><br>Last new (sort of) feature is, that we included our own DNS tools.<br>Namely kdig, khost and knsupdate. They are quite compatible with BIND9 tools,<br>but they also bring several improvements in logging, prettified output and checks.<br>

Be sure to check them out.<br><br>We also had a terrific user feedback, thanks to Erwin Lansing, Anand Buddhdev, Jan-Piet Mens<br>and everyone for the reports.<br><br>So that&#39;s mostly it! For a full overview of changes see:<br>

<a href="https://gitlab.labs.nic.cz/knot/blob/v1.3.0-rc1/NEWS">https://gitlab.labs.nic.cz/knot/blob/v1.3.0-rc1/NEWS</a><br><br>Sources:<br><a href="https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.gz">https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.gz</a><br>

<a href="https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.bz2">https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.bz2</a><br><a href="https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.xz">https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.xz</a><br>

<br>GPG signature:<br><a href="https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.gz.asc">https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.gz.asc</a><br><a href="https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.bz2.asc">https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.bz2.asc</a><br>

<a href="https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.xz.asc">https://secure.nic.cz/files/knot-dns/knot-1.3.0-rc1.tar.xz.asc</a><br><br>Packages available at <a href="http://www.knot-dns.cz">www.knot-dns.cz</a> will be updated soon as well.<br>

<br>Kind regards,<br>Marek<br><br>--<br> Marek Vavruša Knot DNS<br> CZ.NIC Labs <a href="http://www.knot-dns.cz">http://www.knot-dns.cz</a><br> -------------------------------------------<br> Americká 23, 120 00 Praha 2, Czech Republic<br>

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