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> There's no reason why someone can't get their act together and fix ifconfig, or if that is insurmountable, rewrite it while maintaining the same outward appea
by zokier 7y ago
> There's no reason why someone can't get their act together and fix ifconfig, or if that is insurmountable, rewrite it while maintaining the same outward appearances.
But it's telling that nobody stepped up and actually bothered to do that despite all the bitching and moaning.
Successful code is generally produced to solve problems, not fullfil some abstract ideals
- ferzul 7y agosome one in this very thread said did in fact do exactly that, since they needed compatibility with FreeBSD.
- comex 7y agoExcept someone did rewrite it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22628938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22628938 But with the Linux ecosystem's inertia being what it is, rather than the 2 existing implementations of ifconfig in use being displaced by this better one... now there are just 3 implementations of ifconfig in use. As mentioned in the Stack Exchange thread linked in that post, a different someone submitted a relevant patch to one of those existing implementations – way back in 2013. But it was never accepted. More inertia.
- JdeBP 7y ago2009, in fact. I put it in the further reading.
- kelnos 7y agoTo be fair, the third 'ifconfig' implementation is not compatible with the original in command-line options or in output, so adopting it would require changes just as adopting 'ip' does.
- JdeBP 7y agoTwo priors ("original" not really being the right word), each already not compatible with the other. * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/ifconfig.xml#COMPATIBILITY http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/ifconfig.xml#...