On Sun, 22 May 2016 Stefan Lippers-Hollmann <s....@gmx.de> wrote: > Hi > > On 2016-05-22, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > Package: iw > > Version: 3.17-1 > > Severity: normal > > > > The current package description includes the sentence. > > > > In the future iw will become the canonical command line tool for wireless > > configuration and iwconfig/wireless-tools will no longer be required. > > > > I think the future is here and you can delete this sentence. > > That particular paragraph was probably wrong to begin with... > > But the situation itself is a tad more difficult, while iw is used > non-interactively by crda to set the regulatory domain configuration, > it was originally thought (and that's where that particular phrasing > comes from) to provide configuration hooks for ifupdown (equivalent > to wireless-tools' wireless-*). This later part hasn't happened, nor > 'ever' will. Basically because there are unfortunately still too many > non-cfg80211 drivers (legacy ones, like predominantly ipw2x00, all the > random staging stuff, etc.) and because wpa_supplicant is actually > mandatory for 802.11n anyways (which provides said hooks, in a generic > way itself (for both wext and mac80211), while also taking care of link > supervision (reconnect, roaming, ...). Not even taking network-manager > or systemd-networkd into account, which are more and more replacing > ifupdown. > > A 'normal' user will probably only use iw indirectly (via crda) or for > debugging purposes (scanning, link features, etc.), while only rather > advanced users might think about using it to create additional > interfaces, use 4addr or configure txpower or other special driver > settings. > > So yes, the long description needs an overhaul, just not because the > previously thought of future, but because it was bad to begin with. > While the alternative to describe it as an nl80211 based tool to > configure mac80211- or cfg80211 wireless drivers sounds a bit like > buzzword bingo, I'll probably still change it roughly in that > direction (if just to provide these hints to apt-cache). > > Thanks for reminding me, package descriptions are something one > rarely thinks about after the initial upload.
Thanks Stefan for the insight. I was thinking to change the description to something like: --- This package contains the 'iw' command line tool which allows to configure and show information about wireless devices. It's a rather low level tool aimed at advanced users. iw is based on the nl80211 kernel interface and supports the majority of fairly recent hardware. The old tool iwconfig, which uses Wireless Extensions interface, is deprecated and it is strongly recommended to switch to iw and nl80211. --- This is: - one general sentence explaining what iw is; - one more detailed sentence mentioning nl80211 and iwconfig. The second sentence is in part taken from [1]. I'd leave the short description as it is. What do you think? Cheers, Paride [1] https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/documentation/iw
