Subject: Re: [PATCH iproute2-next] Introduce ip-brctl shell script

From: Stefano Brivio <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2019 11:55:22 +0100

On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 14:50:33 -0800
Stephen Hemminger <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Providing brctl or ifconfig scripts is possible, but it really should
> be put in a sample or demo directory and not installed by default.
> It would just cause too much pain to distributions.

On one hand, I did it this way exactly to make it easy for
distributions (after all, I work for a distributor). The rationale is
that it's easier to get rid of things from package scripts rather than
add them. Also implementing a Debian package diversion looked more
elegant this way. No idea about other ones though.

On the other hand, I didn't even think of adding that to examples/.
Maybe that would alleviate David's concern about having to maintain it
forever (if it breaks temporarily, or if we need to remove it for some
reason, it's not a drama).

> I love concise human readable output and hate long winded VMS style
> commands.

That's exactly where I feel the current tools included in iproute2 fall
rather short. Compare "brctl show" to the closest equivalent "IFS='
'
for b in $(ip -br link show type bridge); do ip -br link show type
bridge_slave master ${b%% *}; done".

Sure, as Roopa said, we could and should improve 'bridge', and by now
I'm even almost convinced it's doable without breaking the existing
syntax, but it's not something we're doing overnight.

-- 
Stefano