[Xorp-hackers] BG 172

[Mark Handley]

On 3/19/06, Kristian Larsson <kristian@juniks.net> wrote:
> It's been awhile since Hassos entry on this bug
> so I assume noone is actively working on this.
> As the XORP developers so far have not recognized
> this as a bug I wonder how we should proceed?

There are a lot of different issues in that thread.  The first message
may be indicating a bug (I'm not sure - it's hard to tell), but the
others are all discussing a change of UI, which isn't a bug but rather
it's a feature request :-)

>From a coding point of view, it isn't terribly hard to remove the
create command and perform the same functionality with the set
command.  But I'm not sure we every reached a conclusion on the
desired UI, so I'd like to re-open the discussion.

The reason for the create command was to make it obvious to the user
the difference between creating a node where there can be many (such
as creating peers in BGP, or adding addresses to an interface), and
setting a parameter (when it's only possible to have one value, such
as the holdtime on a particular peering).  This was supposed to be
less confusing to the user - the two behaviours are fundamentally
different, and using a single command means the user can't tell from
the command which behaviour will occur.

With hindsight though, it's not clear to me if it is in fact less
confusing.  But it's hard to tell, because my worldview is distorted
by using XORP, and other's worldviews are clearly distorted by using
Juniper boxes.

So, what do you think is easiest for the user?  That's what matters
most.  If we can agree what the simplest and least confusing UI is, we
will code it.

 - Mark