Message-ID: <83e208048a862b0b0ff8141463d556f387b55527.camel@mail.cogitri.dev>
Subject: Re: Proposed change: drop busybox iproute2, always use real iproute2
From: Rasmus Thomsen <oss@mail.cogitri.dev>
To: Timo Teras <timo.teras@iki.fi>, Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>
Cc: ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2020 09:44:37 +0100
In-Reply-To: <20200320102110.565ad389@vostro.wlan>
References: <e6bc9817f0e78e797cd83f5e189791f2@dereferenced.org>
	 <20200320102110.565ad389@vostro.wlan>
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Hello,

On Fri, 2020-03-20 at 10:21 +0200, Timo Teras wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I understand this makes perfect sense for routers, firewalls and even
> some network appliances.
> 
> However, for embedded setups like RPis, and similar, this can be an
> unnecessary weight.

I think for many setups iproute2 isn't strictly necessary - if it
wasn't for openVPN needing it I wouldn't have it installed on any of my
devices.

> I personally would not do this. It also opens the same reasoning for
> other busybox tools. Most of the utilities there are reduced in
> functionality somehow. And there's specific target groups that the
> real
> version is preferred and needed. That's why we make them available.

+1 on that, many of the Busybox tools don't provide (nearly) as much
functionality as e.g. the GNU Coreutils versions (and we regularly trip
over that on CI), e.g. mktemp or ln. I feel like we should keep using
busybox and just make it as easy as possible for users to install
alternative packages if they so desire.

> In other words, I'd rather not do this. But if majority thinks
> otherwise, then sure.
> 
> I would hope that many comment/vote on this.
> 
> Thanks,
> Timo
> 
> 
> 

Regards,

Rasmus

(Also, offtopic, this is one of the first mails from my mail server
because protonmail doesn't like sending non-html mail right now. Sorry
if I land in your spam (a note about that would be appreciated :).