[illumos-Developer] making -a default for ifconfig?

[Alexey Zaytsev]

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 02:18, Bayard Bell
<buffer.g.overflow at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 29 May 2011, at 23:06, Alexey Zaytsev wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 01:47, Bayard Bell
>> <buffer.g.overflow at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> Seems like a convenience that's better done in a shell function, possibly in the system default profile.
>>
>> If we can agree that -a should be default, why workaround it instead
>> of just changing ifconfig for everyone? If not, whatever.
>
> Because you've got it backwards from where I'm standing. If the reliable way to get "ifconfig -a" output across platforms is to type "ifconfig -a", that's what most people are going to learn, unless maybe they think of Unix as being the implementation they use and nothing else. I'd honestly expect that most Illumos users are more ecumenical than that. If you have an environment where you want the same thing across platforms, you'll know that all the platform aren't imminently going to make "-a" the default behaviour, so you'll use environment changes which can be made to work across platforms instead. Given this is one of those things where it's faster to type three characters than it is to remember which platform does or doesn't need those three characters, it's not fixed if you can't take it with you.

Sorry, I'm still missing your point. Some people are used to ifconfig
-a, some are not. If we agree that the interface list is more useful
then the usage info, both groups can be happy.