Paul Jakma wrote:
On Wed, 5 Apr 2006, Peter Memishian wrote:
Right, I don't think it does -- and ifconfig is already hopeless. I
think it would be better to come up with a new program (ipadm?) which
provided a sane way to view and administer IP interfaces.
As a data-point. Another system abandoned ifconfig too and provided a
new tool for configuring IP. That new tool is indeed more consistent
in interface and better.
And who was this with which tool?
However, the backwards compatibility issues don't go away. Some
proportion of end-users will continue to use (the bitrotting) ifconfig
rather than the new tool - which sometimes leads to subtle problems
due to one tool configuring things slightly differently to the other -
particularly with respect to features whose configuration is more
refined with the newer tool.
While I'm all in favour of being backward compatible, sometimes you
have to weigh up the advantages of continuing to support something
that has never worked well (eg modinsert/modremove) vs upsetting a
small number of people and just removing it to make the program just
a bit saner to deal with.
I.e.: A new tool only avoids backward-compatibility problems in the
syntax, but not always in how the system ends up being configured
(unless you remove the old tool completely, or /don't/ abandon it).
Looking at our ifconfig, I think we are lacking a concise idea of what
it should or should not do. Is it there to administer network
interfaces? Or configure IPsec? Or to manage STREAMS modules? Or...?
Darren
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