Re: wireguardnl: Go package for interacting with WireGuard via generic netlink

[Matt Layher <mdlayher@gmail.com>]

An update for those on the list, I've implemented Jason's requested name 
change and the API is now set up to allow seamless kernel and userspace 
implementations via https://godoc.org/github.com/mdlayher/wireguardctrl.

I will explicitly encourage callers to use this interface rather than 
the "wireguardnl" package, unless we do end up with useful 
netlink-specific functionality like the situation I described previously.

I'll keep working on this for now and report back when I have a working 
userspace implementation.  Should be quite straightforward compared to 
dealing with netlink! :)

- Matt


On 07/23/2018 11:29 AM, Matt Layher wrote:
> Understood and renamed to "wireguardctrl" to avoid confusion.
>
> > But more importantly, you shouldn't expose either the netlink or the 
> xplatform API distinction to users ever. They should be given one 
> interface, not three, and that one interface should be able to select 
> the right thing in 100% of cases.
>
> I can't say I agree with this under all circumstances.
>
> While I will encourage the use of the unified interface, I read that 
> there could be future work to allow the netlink interface to support 
> something like multicast group notifications.  Would you plan on 
> implementing the same functionality for the userspace interface?
>
> I think there are potential use cases for selecting one or the other, 
> but if this ends up being untrue, I can always push these packages 
> behind a Go "internal/" directory at a later time to prevent outside 
> imports.
>
> - Matt
>
>
> On 07/23/2018 11:12 AM, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
>> Hi Matt,
>>
>>> This is super interesting and I actually did not discover it until 
>>> after
>>> I pushed the first few commits to my package.  I could see it making
>>> sense to refactor my current package layout to something like three
>>> packages:
>>>
>>> - wireguardnl: netlink-based communication
>>> - wireguardcfg: text-based userspace configuration protocol 
>>> communication
>>> - wireguard: wrapper for both that detects the module in use and
>>> seamlessly presents a unified interface
>> No, that's really not a good approach at all. First of all, do not
>> take the raw name "wireguard". That's going to cause a lot of
>> confusion. It's really not appropriate.
>>
>> But more importantly, you shouldn't expose either the netlink or the
>> xplatform API distinction to users ever. They should be given one
>> interface, not three, and that one interface should be able to select
>> the right thing in 100% of cases.
>>
>> Jason
>