> I'm not sure I understand the fear around creating a new subcommand, > that shows only ethernet specific information? (Btw, this could be > done for tun, aggr, or other link types as well. In fact we have it > already for aggr and wifi, with dladm show-aggr and dladm show-wifi.)
With Clearview UV, we're introducing the notion of a link "class" (so far: aggregation, tunnel, vlan, vnic, and physical device), which is disjoint from the underlying media. There will be a "show" subcommand for each of these classes, along with "create-*" and "delete-*" subcommands when appropriate. In other words, it's pretty regular and thus we hope it will be fairly intuitive. WiFi is a bit of an "odd man out", in that we needed some way to conveniently show important WiFi information. I still have some regrets regarding "show-wifi", but on the other hand it is easier to grok than a sea of properties. In general, I think we need to very conservative when creating new subcommands, since we risk creating an overwhelming administrative experience akin to the 50 ifconfig subcommands. One goal of *-linkprop was to reduce the proliferation of subcommands (and e.g., we've folded the originally-proposed *-autopush Clearview subcommands into a simple `autopush' link property). Of course, almost anything *could* be modeled as a property, so its applicability is ultimately a judgment call. -- meem
