Re: Making NM portable

["Debarshi Ray" <debarshi ray gmail com>]

>> > Isn't libnl PF_NETLINK socket specific? *BSDs use PF_ROUTE sockets
>> > which differ from their PF_NETLINK counterparts.
>>
>> NM's use of libnl and iproute2 will cause portability problems, yes.
>
> Yeah, though the places are pretty much encapsulated and shouldn't be
> too hard to pull out.

Ok.

Would you be open to the idea of using a library which abstracts out
the various kernel specific gory details (PF_NETLINK, PF_ROUTE,
sysctl, ioctl) behind pluggable backends and provides an uniform
interface across all platforms? I had been hacking on such a thing for
GNU Inetutils, when I started implementing route for them. However I
have not yet separated things out in a library, but it is already
designed to support pluggable backends. I have been able to implement
much of the routing table related features provided by ip(8), but a
few remain. The code is just 15 days old and supports only IPv4. I am
currently working on BSD support to get a feel of the best way to
arrange the backends and the interface.

You can have look at the initial code here under the route directory
(not yet in any VCS):
http://rishi.fedorapeople.org/gnu/inetutils-1.5.tar.gz

Happy hacking,
Debarshi