Re: Retiring dhclient

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:24:05AM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
> That said, I still use dhclient personally on my laptop, though when I
> configure for others, I use dhcpcd instead - like John Nemeth, I have
> a moderately complex dhclient config, and inertia keeps me from switching,
> and I see no particularly good reason for removing it (assuming that the
> rest of ISC dhcp remains - though really dhclient is the only part of that
> that demands presence in base, the server in pkgsrc would be sufficient,
> as it is rarely required, for IPv4 a client is always required).

I think that in many respects, dhcpcd is a huge improvement over
dhclient, and I'm not opposed to replacing dhclient with dhcpcd if old
configurations, especially carefully-crafted dhclient-exit-hooks, can be
kept working.

I think that unless we can do hi-fi dhclient emulation with dhcpcd in
6.0, we should not remove dhclient in 6.0 but wait until 7.0, instead.
I think that it is customary for NetBSD to loudly deprecate a feature in
one major release, actually remove it in the next.  I would hope that we
can also replace dhcrelay and dhcpd with smaller alternatives in 7.0, or
else put them on a diet.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981