guessnet for Debian
-------------------

 * Small list of wishes that, if fulfilled, could help making ifupdown plus
   guessnet a more useful combination:
    - #76142, #92993, #96265, #129003, #164823, #171981, would help in having
      an interesting default for when no test succeeds, especially when I'll
      have implemented DHCP scans
    - #204641 would help in having an even more interesting default for when no
      test succeeds
    - #139383 would help in passing options to guessnet in a more natural way
      than using `map' lines, and would remove the need for a guessnet-ifupdown
      symlink
    - #224742 would help in starting to think of /etc/network/interfaces as a
      common network configuration file shared by many, cooperating
      applications using an elegant, consistent and documented syntax
    - #225860 would help in making the Debian network configuration evolve.
      No need of getting ajt out; however, it would be nice if ifupdown and the
      other network configuration tools in Debian could be maintained by an
      active task force like it happens with xfree and apache.

 * Some thoughts on network detection and configuration on Debian

   There are a lot of packages for automatic network detection and
   reconfiguration on debian: whereami, laptop-netconf, laptop-net, netenv
   and maybe others.  IMHO they all have a problem: they do network detection
   AND reconfiguration.  This is a problem because Debian already has a way to
   configure network interfaces, provided by the base package ifupdown.

   Ifupdown already provides a way to define configuration profiles, and hooks
   for selecting the good one.  This means that Debian does not need a unique
   tool for network detection AND reconfiguration, but two different tools, one
   for network detection and one for system reconfiguration.

   All the mentioned packages provide ways of detecting what the correct
   configuration profile is, and ways for reconfiguring the system to use the
   correct profile.

   The problem is, they don't integrate with ifupdown.  Guessnet is a solution
   that does integrate with ifupdown.  Unfortunately it doesn't implement all
   the tests yet that would be necessary to make it useful for everyone.

   Then we have the system reconfiguration part.  For simple needs, ifupdown
   can take care of it, possibly with the aid of a couple of up/pre-up/down/
   post-down commands.  For more complex needs, ifupdown alone doesn't provide
   an adequate solution.  Maybe the existing reconfiguration methods can be
   hooked into ifupdown as wvdial has been, but I'm not confortable with the
   entangled ifupdown sources to elaborate more on that.  Maybe the problem of
   system reconfiguration is intrinsically complex.

   I'd like to cooperate with the authors and users of the involved packages
   to address this problem and see what they think.  If we share the same
   concerns, maybe we should merge efforts and try to clean up the mess.

