Darren Reed wrote: > Erik Nordmark wrote: >> sowmini.varadhan at sun.com wrote: >> >> >>> As you point out, the converse situation holds for ifconfig- >>> all ifconfig operations today are non-persistent, so the library >>> really needs to be able to do both versions (in order to >>> support both ipadm and ifconfig needs), though ifconfig is >>> not going to start support the "persistent/non-persistent" flag. >>> >> If we think we can finish this (libipadm with persistence and being used >> by ifconfig) by the next minor release then we can at least consider >> making persistent the only way - even when ifconfig is used as the CLI. >> > > So, changing ifconfig's behaviour... > > ...makes us different to every other Unix. > > ...goes against the trend of "Linux familarity" that we're > striving for elsewhere in Open/Solaris. > > Persistance through a new CLI, ipadm, is interesting and > worthwhile but what do we gain through changing the > behaviour of ifconfig like this? > > Is there some new goal or philosophy around Open/Solaris > development to which this kind of change fits in with?
Before having a knee-jerk reaction about "different" it might be useful to consider whether the users would considers this being an improvement or not. Once we've answered that question we can discuss whether such a change would have a negative impact on the users that are familiar with the current non-persistent ifconfig behavior; it if would truly be an improvement they might very happy about the change. Erik
