Re: Clarification on deprecated tools (e.g. hciconfig)

Hi John,

On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 1:55 AM, John Hendy [off-list ref] wrote:

Hello,


I use arch linux and noticed that the wiki states that some tools such
as hciconfig are deprecated:[1]

### begin_quote

Some tools such as hcitool and hciconfig have been deprecated
upstream, and are no longer included in bluez-utils. Since these tools
will no longer be updated, it is recommended that scripts be updated
to avoid using them. If you still desire to use them, install
bluez-utils-compat. See FS#53110 and the Bluez mailing list for more
information. [2] [3]

### end_quote

The bluez mailing list post is for a patch with the following heading:

### begin_quote

This marks the following tools as deprecated as they are not longer
maintained or have been replaced by other tools:

  hciattach hciconfig hcitool hcidump rfcomm sdptool ciptool gatttool

### end_quote

Is there a source of clarification on which of these tools is simply
"not [no?] longer maintained" vs. "replaced"? I don't auto-enable BT
on my computer and I'd like to switch to whatever I should be using if
for no other reason than the news is fresh now. Perhaps in a year this
method will be completely obsolete; by then I'll have forgotten all
about this and wonder what's wrong.

All the tools using raw socket shall be considered deprecated, these
tools may interfere with the so called Management interface since they
can alter the controller state in a way that other applications cannot
detect. Note that for the most part bluetoothctl will be able to do
pretty much everything you want and more, for those operations not
support over D-Bus that are usually at HCI level you may want to use
btmgmt although we may actually turn hciconfig, hcitool, etc to either
use btmgmt to maintain backward compatibility until distros do the
switch.

I'd be happy to update the arch wiki to point to any new information
provided. For what it's worth, I think the information would be
relevant in a widely accessible place (the official bluez site in my
opinion); this question has already popped up in various places. [4]
[5] [6] [7]

I guess the most practical solution would be to switch everything to
use bluetoothctl as much as possible, going with raw or mgmt socket
should only be mentioned as a last resort in case something went
wrong.

Many thanks,
John

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bluetooth
[2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53110
[3] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-bluetooth/msg69239.html
[4] https://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg166798.html
[5] https://github.com/chrippa/ds4drv/issues/123
[6] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/352494
[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/5x9yle
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