RFC further mii(4) changes

[Marius Strobl]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 10:07:11AM +0000, Bjoern A. Zeeb wrote:
> On Apr 21, 2011, at 8:33 PM, Marius Strobl wrote:
> 
> Hi,

Hi

> 
> I fear the change is too big for me to review currently.

Given that the majority of changes break backwards compatibility in
some way I intend to comitting them in one pass rather than splitting
them up, which unfortunately results in a rather large patch ...

> 
> One thing I am still pondering is whether we would be able to reserve enough spares (wherever needed) to be able to eventually allow to query-through and gather a lot more information than we currently expose via ifconfig.  It would be really great to be able to ask for all the bits.  Not sure how linux for example handles that for mii-tool/ethtool or how those things work, but .. well you get it.
> 

Providing functionality akin mii-tool/ethtool is also something I'd
like to see. Unfortunately, I currently lack the time to work on that,
maybe next year as a GSoC or some such, in case someone is willing to
mentor this time :) However, I think when going a route similar to
pci(4)/pciconf(8) (without repeating their mistakes) it should be
possible to implement that without breaking the ABI.

Marius