On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 05:36:20PM -0700, Theo de Raadt wrote: > >> If there are desires to improve this (I hear Naddy grumbling!) then the > >> stomach to break backwards compat must be present, or suggestions on how > >> to do it without breaking backwards compat must be suggested. > > > >My suggestion is two-fold: > > > >* Introduce a new format. This new format will ignore # comments, > > call ! commands, but otherwise pass on everything unchanged to > > ifconfig. I'm neutral on the matter of retaining "dhcp" and > > "rtsol" as shortcuts for "!dhclient \$if" and "!rtsol \$if". > > > >* To maintain backward compatibility, retain the old parsing for > > hostname.* files. Interface configuration files in the new format > > will have a different name; if.* or whatever. > > > >Does that sound workable? > > Not really. The netbsd experiment with ifconfig file format does > not appear to have been a success. > > reason why? ifconfig has a really crummy argument parser, with all > sorts of side effects. hostname.* files were supposed to isolate > people from some of those nasty effects. > > stated simply, it would not have helped Paul. He would have made > the same mistake. >
Plus some interface changes need multiple ifconfig commands and a specific order to work. I think there is no way to express complex interface configurations without having an order in which the operations are done. Sure it is possible to throw the ordering all into netstart but I think that is not helpful. -- :wq Claudio
