Re: [PATCH] vlan: set sysfs device_type to 'vlan'

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 8:36 AM, David Miller [off-list ref] wrote:

From: Doug Goldstein <redacted>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:53:57 -0500

quoted

Sets the sysfs device_type to 'vlan' for udev. This makes it easier for
applications that query network information via udev to identify vlans
instead of using strrchr().

Signed-off-by: Doug Goldstein <redacted>

You're extremely misguided.  This change, in fact, makes it ten times
harder for such applications to query such devices.

That makes not much sense, really. Every new interface would fall into
that category. At least I can't see any mis-guidance here. The other
devtypes for the major netif types are not that much older.

Because now the application has to decide whether it wants to support
EVERY EXISTING SYSTEM OUT THERE or not.  Hundreds of millions of Linux
systems do not provide this attribute.

Applications have to handle the case of not having the 'vlan' device
type available attribute essentially forever.

Which is an entirely separate issue, and not a technical reason not to
add new interfaces which are already in use for most other types of
netifs.

So providing it in new kernels provides zero value whatsoever.

It sure does provide a value. The kernel can efficiently filter
uevents in the socket with this available. All other major types of
netdevs support that too, it's just a matter of completeness. For that
reason, it looks useful to me.

I'm not applying this patch, sorry.

That's just sad. Not that I really care about that functionality, but
your reasoning is absolutely not transparent.

Kay