From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
Subject: Re: [ofa-general] Re: [PATCH v3 08/13] QLogic VNIC: sysfs interface
	implementation for the driver
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:54:49 +0200
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Cc: Amar Mudrankit <amar.mudrankit@qlogic.com>, Dave Dillow <dillowda@ornl.gov>,
	Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>, general@lists.openfabrics.org,
	netdev@vger.kernel.org, Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@vyatta.com>,
	poornima.kamath@qlogic.com
To: Roland Dreier <rdreier@cisco.com>
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Roland Dreier wrote:
>  > > There is nothing stopping adding a well designed alternate interface.
>  > > Either netlink or ioctl's are okay. As long as it is 32/64 bit clean.
>
>  > From a quick look it seems it should use rtnl_link instead
>  > of adding yet another private sysfs interface.
>
> This seems crazy -- why do we want to push things towards the complexity
> of rtnl_link instead of a simple text-based interface that can be
> trivial used with 'echo' from the shell?

Its not complicated at all. Ability to use "echo" seems like a
pretty poor argument to me.

>   What advantages does that give?

- atomic configuration changes
- atomic configuration dumps
- configuration change notifications
- same interface as for all other network-related configurations
- easily extensible
- not yet another private driver interface
- not text based, which makes it a lot more convenient for using in programs