On 1/15/18 5:55 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Jan 2018 17:49:07 -0700, David Ahern wrote:
>> On 1/15/18 5:30 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
>>> A new flag ("--skip-extack") is added to the Python script so as to
>>> allow to skip these checks. This is because extack messages cannot be
>>> displayed by tc and ip if tools from iproute2 package were compiled
>>> without libmnl, but we do not want this to prevent users to run the
>>> other checks.
>>
>> That is unfortunate. Did you consider auto-detecting support? e.g., run
>> a command that is known to fail and return a message. For example,
>>
>> $ ip ro add 1.1.1.1/32 dev eth0 onlink
>> Error: Invalid flags for nexthop - PERVASIVE and ONLINK can not be set.
>
> That's a good idea. And then if it fails would you suggest to skip the
> test entirely or just skip extack checks? With the --skip-extack flag
> the hope was that people would be inclined to install libmnl to save
> themselves the hassle of setting the flag each time. If it's detected
> automatically there is no hassle/nudge to install libmnl..
>
My inclination is to avoid unnecessary options and adapt to the
environment. ie., just skip the checks. You can still nudge users with a
warning that it appears ip or tc does not have extack support.
