On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 12:50 PM, Jouke Witteveen <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear all, > > For little over a year now, I have maintained netcfg. In doing so I > have encountered three major problems. > 1. Despite best efforts, the code and control flow of netcfg remain > rather messy. > 2. Usage of netcfg has many corner cases. > 3. Some wheels are invented by both systemd and netcfg, but it is not > easy to have netcfg make use of systemd. > > In order to deal with these issues I have forked netcfg. In the end, > it turned out to be more of a rewrite. The result[1] I have called > netctl. The main purpose of netctl is to provide profile-based > networking in a systemd environment. Here are some of the changes with > respect to netcfg. > a. Variables in profiles are CamelCase instead of UPPER_CASE to mimic > systemd services. > b. All configuration files are gone, configuration is done through the > netctl utility, which interfaces systemd's systemctl. > c. The only non-trivial usage that is provided is automatic > configuration through ifplugd or wpa_actiond, formerly known as > net-auto-wire{d,less}, now known as netctl-ifplugd and netctl-auto. > > Some of the bugs that are fixed: > d. Bind to network interfaces during boot, thus preventing the lack of > a connection after boot recently encountered by owners of slow > hardware. > e. Allow more complex nameserver setups by using resolvconf (openresv). > > Transition should not be hard. At any rate the three new man pages > netctl(1), netctl.profile(5), and netctl.special(7) should answer all > questions. Here is a basic outline of the changes required: > - Rename variables in the profiles in /etc/network.d/ and unquote some > of their values (mainly Interface=). > - Run `netctl enable <profile>` for every profile in the old NETWORKS > array. 'last' doesn't work this way, see netcfg.special(7). > - Use `netctl list`/`netctl start <profile>` instead of `netcfg-menu`, > wifi-menu remains available. > > As half of the total code base has been removed and almost every line > in the other half has been touched, I expect some easy-to-fix bugs to > be introduced. Therefore I need testers. Please test netctl: > I. $ git clone git://github.com/joukewitteveen/netctl.git > II. $ cd netctl; make pkgbuild > III. copy netctl-*.tar.xz and PKGBUILD to an empty directory > IV. run makepkg in that directory > V. install (using `pacman -U`) the resulting package. > > During the 0.x series, I am not afraid of breaking compatibility. If > all goes well, I would like to replace netcfg with netctl starting > with a 1.0 release. I know many people don't like the idea of dropping > netcfg or netcfg compatibility, but I think the situation of netctl is > far easier to maintain. Personally, I don't see much future in netcfg > besides an optional compatibility layer on top of netctl. > > Thanks to all testers! > - Jouke > > [1] https://github.com/joukewitteveen/netctl
I have tagged a 0.2 release of netctl. It is surprisingly stable on my machines and the only stuff I haven't seen working yet (because I know of no one who tested it) are the following connections: bond, bridge, pppoe, tunnel, tuntap, vlan. I would still like a Developer's comment on the (viability of the) project and additionally would like to move the repository back to projects.archlinux.org. The next thing on my list is to post a call for testers on the forums. Keep on testing, - Jouke
