Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: openrc: use iproute2 for all network handling in linux

[Mike Frysinger]

On Sunday 13 November 2011 10:16:31 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> Mike Frysinger schrieb:
> > for basic setups, it is completely redundant.  which is the only case
> > we're talking about here.
> [...]
> > you keep saying "net-tools" when you actually mean "ifconfig".  the
> > net-tools package provides quite a bit more than the common
> > ifconfig/route/iptunnel tools which ip replaces and for which there are
> > no replacements.
>
> If we talk about basic setups, then iproute2 provides everything too.

no one said otherwise.  i did however say requiring iproute2 for static 
ip/route setups is redundant.  i see you agree.

> for some reason the user prefers to use ifconfig over ip, or needs
> functions not covered by iproute2 (are you referring to netstat?), then
> he can install net-tools.

we aren't talking about removing net-tools from system.  until we have 
replacement for all of its tools, it's always going to be there.  the 
host/domain related tools are required by openrc to set/get the 
hostname/etc...  i don't think splitting it makes sense as we're talking about 
a package here that takes up less than 2MiB in total.

netstat should be replaced by iproute2's ss tool.

i'd also suspect that many scripts (packages/users) execute ifconfig to get 
network information.  obviously hard to quantify, but that's what you get for 
having a util that has existed for ~30 years, and for ~20 years more than 
iproute2.

> There is indeed no compelling reason to use ip over ifconfig presently,
> however if the cf80211 vs. wext situation is an indicator (where things
> like wireless regulatory support are only supported by iw and will never
> be by iwconfig), then at some point the migration will be inevitable.

funny thing about this analogy:
	- ifconfig/ip long existed before the wireless tree ... while the latter 
has moved on, the former still exists
	- the wireless tools did not have years of built up logic around ifconfig

> >> Do you need iproute2 at all? I think you could fall back to busybox if
> >> iproute2 is not installed.
> >
> > that introduces an unnecessary level of instability for us to worry
> > about imo.  if we want iproute, we should execute `ip` only.
>
> It was only meant as a fallback, if the user needs to uninstall
> iproute2. Having some potential instability may be preferable to not
> working at all.

... which is why we have the ifconfig module

> openrc can already use busybox udhcpc instead of dhcpcd, so there is a
> precedent.

that's not the same thing at all.  `udhcpc` is not intended to be a drop-in 
replacement for `dhcpcd`.  we have a dedicated module to work with udhcpc, and 
we have another dedicated module to work with dhcpcd.

to be clear, my problem is with dropping the ifconfig module completely.  i 
don't have a problem with requiring iproute2 for more complicated things, or 
even for making it part of the Linux system set.  but these are orthogonal 
issues imo to the question "should openrc contain support for ifconfig/route".
-mike