> > this does 2 things: > > [...] > > I may recall what I have sent to you in private email, excerpt from > FreeBSD ping6 manpage: > > --------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- > There have been many discussions on why we separate ping6 and ping(8). > Some people argued that it would be more convenient to uniform the ping > command for both IPv4 and IPv6. The followings are an answer to the > request. > > From a developer's point of view: since the underling raw sockets API is > totally different between IPv4 and IPv6, we would end up having two > types of code base. There would actually be less benefit to uniform the > two commands into a single command from the developer's standpoint. > > From an operator's point of view: unlike ordinary network applications > like remote login tools, we are usually aware of address family when > using network management tools. We do not just want to know the > reachability to the host, but want to know the reachability to the host > via a particular network protocol such as IPv6. Thus, even if we had a > unified ping(8) command for both IPv4 and IPv6, we would usually type a > -6 or -4 option (or something like those) to specify the particular > address family. This essentially means that we have two different > commands. > --------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- > > When we have two binaries I have more trust when one of them is working > *only* with IPv4 and another one *only* with IPv6. > > So, what user problems are you trying to solve with this merge? >
Mikhail, with great regret I am informing you that the opinion of some random gmail user does not actually matter around here.
