On 2011/6/10 James Rayner <james@archlinux.org> wrote:
netcfg has an option that runs ip/iproute with any custom option (routes, IPs anything), the option is "IPCFG". It may be seen in the example ethernet-iproute[1].
IFCFG is the obscure command you mention, unfortunately it's not too obscure, as this was how static IPs were set before iproute configuration was added. It was retained for backwards compatibility.
The only reason net-tools was still a requirement was setting hostname. A change similar to initscripts [2] at line 121 of src/connections/ethernet [3] would suffice.
After that it ought to be safe to make net-tools an optional dependency. Systems already using net-tools will keep functioning, and a notice could be placed in code that handles IFCFG to advise those users to migrate to the iproute configuration.
I will add some warning about IFCFG. I made the needed change for hostname and the next release will set net-tools to be optional. I will need testers for the various patches I merged from the bug tracker, notably IPv6. Any comments on the suggested implementation are welcome. -- Rémy.