From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=)
Subject: Re: network-interface-names-*
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2017 15:27:18 +0100
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References: <20170111075607.GA5083@jocasta.intra>
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In-Reply-To: <20170111075607.GA5083@jocasta.intra> (John Darrington's message
	of "Wed, 11 Jan 2017 08:56:07 +0100")
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To: John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org

John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au> skribis:

> The procedures exported from guix/build/syscalls :=20
>
> network-interface-names
> network-interface-flags
> set-network-interface-flags
> network-interface-netmask
>
> .. and possibily a few others all take an argument called "sock" or "sock=
et".
>
> In the case of network-interface-names this parameter is #:optional and=20
> defaults to  (socket SOCK_STREAM AF_INET 0)
>
> In all of the other procedures this argument is not optional, but so far
> as I can tell, all callers pass the above expression as its value, and=20
> if I understand the API correctly, it's unlikely that anything else will
> ever be required.
>
> Will you accept a patch making "sock" #:optional for all parameters which
> need it?

The problem is that we=E2=80=99d need to change the order of arguments in a=
ll of
these procedures (so that =E2=80=98sock=E2=80=99 comes last), and it would =
also
encourage inefficient code: we=E2=80=99d keep calling socket(2) for every c=
all.

So while I agree that the API is kind of cumbersome (well, the
underlying syscalls are!), I=E2=80=99m inclined to leave it as is.

Now, maybe you can add higher-level procedures along the lines of
=E2=80=98configure-network-interface=E2=80=99?

Thanks,
Ludo=E2=80=99.