Re: Feedback on variable sized set elements

[Shaun Brady <brady.1345@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 12:27:45PM +0200, Florian Westphal wrote:
> 
> Why?  This is hard, the kernel has no notion of data types.
> 

I speculated I could contain things up in userland, but as you
stated, the kernel got involved (would need to be aware of the change).

If the ask is more philosophical, it would have been for educational
purposes.

> 
> The kernel doesn't know what an ipv4 or ipv6 address is.
> It only knows the total key size.

This became clear, and clear that I wasn't missing anything. Further,
it indicated my thinking was swimming upstream from a design goal of
netfilter, so to hear you conclude with ...
> 
> ...I don't think its worth the pain.  Also because then ipv4 becomes
> indistinguishable from on-wire mapped addresses.
> 

... is mostly what I needed.


Thank you for taking the time to answer my open ended inquiries,
especially when no real code was presented.

I'll find something new to chew on shortly!


Thanks!


SB