Subject: Re: [RFC RTNETLINK 00/09]: Netlink link creation API

From: Patrick McHardy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:50:56 +0200

Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Reading through the patches they look usable to me.
> 
> Having to patch iproute to create the more interesting network
> devices sucks, but that problem seems fundamental.  We might
> be able to avoid it if we allowed fields to be reused between
> different types of devices but that makes the error checking
> trickier, and we aren't likely to have that many types of
> devices so there likely isn't much value in generalizing.

You don't really need to patch it, installing a new iplink_XXX.so
file is enough. Generalizing driver specific options more than
what we currently have doesn't look very promising. I think your
driver was simple enough to get along with the generic device
attributes though (IFLA_LINK or IFLA_MASTER).

> I do think we should specify the IFLA_KIND (was: IFLA_NAME) values in
> a header file.  So it is easy to get a list of all of the different
> kinds and so we don't conflict.

I don't think conflicts are going to be a problem (it would be
nice if modpost would warn about duplicate aliases though).
How is listing IFLA_KIND types in a header file going to help
get a list? Presuming the user knows what kind of device he
wants to set up and is not just looking for things to play
around with I also don't see any real value in this.