Re: [patch] Support Debian's resolvconf

[Olivier Blin <oblin mandriva com>]

Colin Walters <walters verbum org> writes:

> What we want to do is get to the point where NM is installed everywhere,
> from servers to desktops to laptops.  It should be *the* networking API.
> That way even on servers or desktops, applications can e.g. listen for
> D-BUS signals on network availability and react accordingly.

Great, are you gonna duplicate all the ifup/down scripts, the network
service, the wireless-tools, and wpa_supplicant to achieve that?
It's nice to be able to know and modify the status of the network
using a daemon and D-Bus, but what you're doing currently with
NetworkManager is rewriting all the existent programs.

Furthermore, NetworkManager isn't yet able to save its configuration
in the standard ifcfg-* files, thus it doesn't integrate with the
network initscript. So, it breaks backward compatibility, while it
could be possible to re-use the current configuration system. Or maybe
you have some very good reason to store this in gconf instead of plain
old text files.

It also makes impossible to use common commands such as ifup, and
there is no command-line alternative for NetworkManager now. I know it
would be possible, but there is none for now.
For now, there's no solution to edit configuration with a text editor,
that's stopper for servers.
It also leads people that want to use the network service for some
interfaces to maintain two different configuration spaces for network,
which isn't really suitable.

Another problem is that no API has been defined for NetworkManager,
while it's being used by some user applications such as Epiphany.
So it makes quite difficult for people that don't want to use your
daemon to implement compatible daemons.
It would be nice to define a common network monitoring D-Bus API, on
FreeDesktop for example, so that the network monitoring can be
implemented without depending on the configuration policy.
I think a common API is a better goal than a unique daemon.

That's basically why I've preferred to enhance network scripts for
next Mandriva release instead of using NetworkManager.

Well, anyway, your wireless applet looks very good, and that's a major
enhancement for desktop users. Great work!

Regards

-- 
Olivier Blin
Mandriva
Mandrakesoft becomes Mandriva