bin/88119: [patch] partial matching for ifconfig

[Brooks Davis]

The following reply was made to PR bin/88119; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Brooks Davis <brooks at one-eyed-alien.net>
To: bw at desync.com
Cc: Brooks Davis <brooks at one-eyed-alien.net>, freebsd-gnats-submit at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/88119: [patch] partial matching for ifconfig
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 16:04:42 -0800

 On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 05:35:30PM -0500, bw at desync.com wrote:
 > On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 09:18:22AM -0800, Brooks Davis wrote:
 > > On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 07:26:58PM -0400, bw at desync.com wrote:
 > > > True, fixed.
 > > 
 > > I dislike this 'fix'.  If the partial matching is going to be generally
 > > useful, ifconfig needs to have a valid return status when it's run.
 > 
 > I'll just point out that OpenBSD's ifconfig returns true when displaying
 > interfaces by group.
 
 The OpenBSD group stuff is based on a concept that is invalid today.
 The <drivername><unitnumber> model has a long history, but it poorly
 suited to reality, hense interface renaming.  Once names are arbitrary,
 treating the driver name as a group no longer makes sense (not that
 it ever made much sense given that we name interfaces by driver
 implementation and have dozens of implementations.)
 
 I thank your for your submission and for discussing this, I just can't
 convince myself that the POLA volations this creates are worth the
 convenience.  Ifconfig has too many users and is used in too many
 scripts to change it lightly.
 
 -- Brooks