Feature request: Host list via file with update on every request

[ixpict]

Using arguments via cli severely limits the launch of such a proxy by the local computer. For a small team a variant with a file of hosts or even better some kind of database would be perfect.

[jay7x]

I see the point and I thought about having a config file too.. Though I've considered 2 ways for future:

1. To have a etc-hosts-proxy hosts update -H example.com=1.2.3.4 [ -H ... ] which just updates a yaml/json config file.
2. To have a REST API on some predefined fake hostname (privoxy has it on http://p.p e.g.) which allows to modify host mapping (and maybe to save the state in a json file)

As expected, this leads to another question.. how to reload the config? My ideas were:

1. etc-hosts-proxy reload.. i.e. no auto-reload, just kick the proxy manually.
2. To setup some kind of inotify()-like watcher thread which reloads the config on a file change.

Now you've proposed 3rd way which might be easier than (2).. maybe I can accept the idea of doing stat() on a config file per request.. it's just personal small proxy in the end, not a telecom-grade solution :)

[ixpict]

I think first way is better with some api for reload and check updates via SIGHUP as the second way. inotify - is not very useful in containters and you need to extend inotify limits in some environments.

[jay7x]

Thank you for explaining the inotify() limits, I didn't thought about containers again.. My main concern was OS support here.

Ok, that sounds reasonable.. Let's keep this open for a while. My long weekend is over so I should find some time to work on this later.

[ixpict]

We live in the 21st century and containers are the most versatile package managers right now :) nobody wants to overthink things.