iproute2 and libbpf: vendoring on the small scale

Posted Nov 17, 2020 0:03 UTC (Tue) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331)
In reply to: iproute2 and libbpf: vendoring on the small scale by mkubecek
Parent article: iproute2 and libbpf: vendoring on the small scale

> Did it ever occur to you that the actual reason why you see ifconfig output as prettier, easier to read, "human centered" or even "making eyes bleed less" is that you are used to it?

It did occur to me, but I still think the ifconfig output is better. I'm not saying that's a universal truth, but being familiar with both commands, my preference is still ifconfig's output. In general, while familiarity does affect our perception of UI quality, it is and must be possible to compare one UI against another and say one is better.

Besides: if the output style really doesn't make a difference, why *not* stick with the ifconfig style for familiarity's sake? The goal is to get everyone off obsolete tools, isn't it?

Sometimes, when people replace tool X with tool Y on the grounds that X is obsolete, they make Y differ from X in ways arbitrary ways that aren't related to X's obsolescence, causing needless pain in the transition. I say that when we replace X with Y, we make Y resemble X as much as possible to drive adoption of Y and reduce transition pain. For example, I think Python 3 should have kept its print statement: making print a function was a needless incompatibility.

iproute2 and libbpf: vendoring on the small scale

Posted Nov 17, 2020 8:34 UTC (Tue) by mbunkus (subscriber, #87248) [Link]

> it is and must be possible to compare one UI against another and say one is better.

I wholeheartedly disagree. As long as neither is doing something immensely stupid such as presenting numbers in binary or octal, how information is perceived and digested highly depends on the human doing the digesting. We're so diverse in how we work that there cannot be one canonical best way do present it.

As said elsewhere, I highly prefer ip's output. You don't, and that's fine, but please don't think that just because you prefer ifconfig's output, that that's a universal truth or proof of it being better than ip's.

iproute2 and libbpf: vendoring on the small scale

Posted Nov 18, 2020 0:09 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

> Besides: if the output style really doesn't make a difference, why *not* stick with the ifconfig style for familiarity's sake?

Mostly because it's wildly irregular and more or less impossible to extend. The ip output format is, uh, a bit painful to read (I suspect due to the lack of anything resembling punctuation), but it's extremely extensible and it does have one valuable extra property: each line-and-following-indented-lines group is in many cases valid or almost valid *input* to the corresponding ip subcommand, or at least similar enough that you can tell what to feed ip to replicate this configuration again (or to change it slightly). ifconfig has nothing like this.