Re: [PATCH iproute2-next] Introduce ip-brctl shell script

[David Ahern <dsahern@gmail.com>]

On 1/30/19 3:55 AM, Stefano Brivio wrote:
>> I get your intent, but this seems more appropriate for you / Red Hat to
>> carry than something we want to distribute as part of iproute2.
> 
> Sure, I could also do that, but:
> 
> - me creating another project: similar maintenance burden for
>   distribution maintainers as keeping bridge-utils around,
>   for something that won't have any active development
> 
> - carrying it in a single distribution downstream: I would have gone
>   that way if I thought it wouldn't be useful for others. I myself use
>   (also) distributions other than Fedora/RHEL and this would feel
>   just... wrong
> 
> Why do you think it's not appropriate to distribute this as part of
> iproute2? Too ugly? Bloated? Anything I can improve?
> 
> I think it would be appropriate because it intimately depends on
> ip-link -- it's really nothing more than a helper for iproute2 tools.
> 

Again, I understand your point ... I still, too often, type ifconfig
from long in-grained muscle memory.

This is a convenience wrapper around commands packaged in iproute2. If
iproute2 adds this wrapper, it will have to carry it and maintain it
forever. Distributions (Fedora, RHEL, Debian, etc) may see it
differently and decide to add this patch onto iproute2 that they
distribute as a means for dropping bridge-utils. That's a reasonable
migration choice. It is just not something upstream iproute2 should carry.