Re: the future of ethtool

[Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com>]

On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 13:14 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:14:02 +0000
> Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 12:44 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > [...]
> > > My views are simple:
> > > 
> > > Ethtool needs to be an extension of existing netlink API for interfaces.
> > >   - handles multiple values per transaction
> > >   - extensible
> > [...]
> > 
> > Are you suggesting to send and receive the existing ethtool command and
> > result structures (with some wrapping) through netlink?  Or some larger
> > change to the API?
> 
> The existing ioctl base API should be kept as legacy and something
> better developed.

So you're saying: expose all new operations through netlink (and only
netlink) while keeping the old operations exposed only through ioctl?
That's hardly an improvement as it means ethtool or any other
configuration utility will have to support both APIs indefinitely.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Communications
Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job.
They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.