Re: [PATCH net-next 4/5] bonding: make Kconfig toggle to disable legacy interfaces

On Tue, 22 Sep 2020 16:47:07 -0700
Jay Vosburgh [off-list ref] wrote:

Stephen Hemminger [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Tue, 22 Sep 2020 09:37:30 -0400
Jarod Wilson [off-list ref] wrote:
 

quoted

By default, enable retaining all user-facing API that includes the use of
master and slave, but add a Kconfig knob that allows those that wish to
remove it entirely do so in one shot.

Cc: Jay Vosburgh <redacted>
Cc: Veaceslav Falico <redacted>
Cc: Andy Gospodarek <andy@greyhouse.net>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Davis <redacted>
Cc: <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Jarod Wilson <redacted>  

Why not just have a config option to remove all the /proc and sysfs options
in bonding (and bridging) and only use netlink? New tools should be only able
to use netlink only.  

	I agree that new tooling should be netlink, but what value is
provided by such an option that distros are unlikely to enable, and
enabling will break the UAPI?

quoted

Then you might convince maintainers to update documentation as well.
Last I checked there were still references to ifenslave.  

	Distros still include ifenslave, but it's now a shell script
that uses sysfs.  I see it used in scripts from time to time.

Some bleeding edge distros have already dropped ifenslave and even ifconfig.
The Enterprise ones never will.

The one motivation would be for the embedded folks which are always looking
to trim out the fat. Although not sure if the minimal versions of commands
in busybox are pure netlink yet.