[pkg-wpa-devel] cleaning up our suggested modes of use

[Kel Modderman]

Hi,

Development of the "new order" wpasupplicant seems to be stabilising, 
and I see now two clear modes of operation, and would like to propose a 
clean up; consolidate documentation and code support for (IMO) the two 
preferred modes of operation.

   1. managed mode, all WPA settings given via the interfaces stanza for
      any given network interface
   2. roaming mode via wpa-roam/wpa_action: requires user supplied or
      hand crafted wpa_supplicant.conf, and supports multiple locations
      and network profiles


As part of the clean-up, I'd love to see the following changes:

    * hand crafted action scripts, their documentation, examples and
      support in ifupdown.sh in the form of conf_wpa_cli() (and some
      variable names) should disappear. I would like to _completely_
      purge this stuff. These are not really a good solution for anybody
      and they have been condemned before [1]. They are hackish and I
      really dislike conf_wpa_cli() and WPA_CLI_ACTFILE. This would help
      clean up a congested NEWS.Debian file too.
    * wpa-conf (our current mode #2), which is fairly useless on its
      own, unless used with wpa_action or a hand crafted action script,
      or your machine will _always_ connect at networking start-up, and
      will _always_ use the same method of configuring the interface no
      matter which network is actually active. It should not be
      suggested as a independent mode of operation, but rather an
      alternative way to setup the "managed" mode of operation.
    * A slightly more comprehensive document, explaining in detail the
      way the "managed" mode works along with quite a few real world
      examples. This would help eliminate the doubts and misconceptions
      currently floating around [2,3].
    * An additional section to the above mentioned document, explaining
      more about wpa-roam/wpa_action, how to set it up, how to use it,
      what to do when problems arise along with some real world examples
      or working configurations.
    * Maybe put troubleshooting and problem reporting into an
      independent document file. There are quite a few issues that can
      arise, and I expect this document would grow and change
      substantially over time.


Although I don't think our current documentation support is bad, I took 
a step back and looked at it from a user's POV and saw room for 
improvement. Additionally, until now, I've really neglected to help 
Reinhard out with documentation much at all, so if anything is lacking, 
confusing or misleading, I am the only person to blame ;-)

What do others think? When can I get started?

Thanks, Kel.

[1] 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-wpa-devel/2006-May/000417.html
[2] https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/wpasupplicant/+bug/44315
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=367655