> There's no reason why someone can't get their act together and fix ifconfig, or if that is insurmountable, rewrite it while maintaining the same outward appearances.
But it's telling that nobody stepped up and actually bothered to do that despite all the bitching and moaning.
Successful code is generally produced to solve problems, not fullfil some abstract ideals
But with the Linux ecosystem's inertia being what it is, rather than the 2 existing implementations of ifconfig in use being displaced by this better one... now there are just 3 implementations of ifconfig in use.
As mentioned in the Stack Exchange thread linked in that post, a different someone submitted a relevant patch to one of those existing implementations – way back in 2013. But it was never accepted. More inertia.
To be fair, the third 'ifconfig' implementation is not compatible with the original in command-line options or in output, so adopting it would require changes just as adopting 'ip' does.
But it's telling that nobody stepped up and actually bothered to do that despite all the bitching and moaning.
Successful code is generally produced to solve problems, not fullfil some abstract ideals