[arch-projects] [netcfg] Call for testers: netctl

[Jouke Witteveen]

On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 1:36 AM, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 12:50 PM, Jouke Witteveen <j.witteveen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In order to deal with these issues I have forked netcfg. In the end,
>> it turned out to be more of a rewrite. The result[1] I have called
>> netctl. The main purpose of netctl is to provide profile-based
>> networking in a systemd environment. Here are some of the changes with
>> respect to netcfg.
>
> Have you compared your aims/features to NetworkManager? In particular,
> do you see any deficiencies in nmcli that you will provide with
> netctl?

No, I have not done a comparison :-P. Although from the surface, it
seems NetworkManager is far more complex. It is a Gnome project
written in C with deep system integration (read: many dependencies).
By contrast, netctl is a transparant and highly configurable
collection of shell scripts. Furthermore, I doubt whether
NetworkManager integrates as cleanly with systemd as netctl does. Read
a netctl-generated service file if you are not convinced.

Another alternative is ConnMan. It looks a little more lean than
NetworkManager to my eyes, but I also haven't done a comparison with
this one. Indeed, there is more than enough choice in network
managers, but I actually think netctl has some things going for it.
Its new codebase is easy to navigate, contribute to and maintain, and
it doesn't invent wheels that are also invented by systemd.

I agree that it would be nice if someone did a decent comparison of
some of the network manager contestants.

Regards,
- Jouke