[Dnsmasq-discuss] How may is too many CNAME references?

[Ercolino de Spiacico]

Ok understood and very valid answer.

Let's remember one thing the (excellent) dnsmasq is extremely common in 
small routers and embedded devices where permanent storage is often not 
available.

I am ok sticking to address= syntax so working on A records only but I 
was wondering if dnsmasq could go the extra mile. Let me explain here below.

In embedded systems with only Flash+squash-filesystem a "file" is 
actually stored in RAM. In case of adblock this file can take up lots of 
RAM... some adblock lists are MBs in size and contain domains only (one 
per line). If we are to process the list to prefix the "address=/" 
directive and even suffix the IP address the file (RAM demand) can 
easily double in size.

Is there a potential for dnsmasq to facilitate this cases? What I'm 
thinking is for dnsmasq to allow e.g. a new syntax like:

address=\file:$path_to_a_domains_list_file\IP

and every line in that file is always prefixed/suffixed with the 
information of the directive referencing the file. This would keep the 
domain blocking info to a bare minimum, so essentially  the file would 
need to contain only a list of domains (one per line).

Just a thought... if you google this you'll see that ads/domain-blocking 
is actually relatively common on embedded devices; opensource 
router-firmware in-primis: Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc.

Thanks