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

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Message-ID: <800cb3d3-c749-3f36-83ea-0375e67fbd33@cumulusnetworks.com>
Date:   Wed, 23 Jan 2019 17:09:42 +0200
From:   Nikolay Aleksandrov <nikolay@...ulusnetworks.com>
To:     Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@...hat.com>,
        David Ahern <dsahern@...il.com>
Cc:     Phil Sutter <phil@....cc>, Eric Garver <egarver@...hat.com>,
        Tomas Dolezal <todoleza@...hat.com>,
        Stephen Hemminger <stephen@...workplumber.org>,
        Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh@....org>, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH iproute2-next] Introduce ip-brctl shell script

On 18/01/2019 19:00, Stefano Brivio wrote:
> This script wraps 'ip' and 'bridge' tools to provide a drop-in replacement
> of the standalone 'brctl' utility.
> 
> It's bug-to-bug compatible with brctl as of bridge-utils version 1.6,
> has no dependencies other than a POSIX shell, and it's less than half
> the binary size of brctl on x86_64.
> 
> As many users (including myself) seem to find brctl usage vastly more
> intuitive than ip-link, possibly due to habit, this might be a lightweight
> approach to provide brctl syntax without the need to maintain bridge-utils
> any longer.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@...hat.com>
> Acked-by: Phil Sutter <phil@....cc>
> ---
>  man/man8/Makefile   |   5 +-
>  man/man8/ip-brctl.8 | 187 +++++++++++++++
>  misc/Makefile       |   9 +-
>  misc/ip-brctl.in    | 572 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  4 files changed, 770 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 man/man8/ip-brctl.8
>  create mode 100755 misc/ip-brctl.in

Hi,
IMO the effort should be towards improving iproute2 to be
easier to use and more intuitive. We should be pushing people to use the new tools
instead of trying to find workarounds to keep the old tools alive.
I do like to idea of deprecating bridge-utils, but I think it should be done
via improving ip/bridge enough to be pleasant to use. We will have to
maintain this compatibility layer forever if it gets accepted and we'll never
get rid of brctl this way.

Thanks,
 Nik