Maybe it's time to get rid of tcpwrappers/tcpd?

[Simo Sorce]

On Mon, 2014-03-24 at 21:22 +0000, Peter Robinson wrote:
> >> I wonder whether it wouldn't be time to say goodbye to tcpwrappers in
> >> Fedora. There has been a request in systemd upstream to disable support
> >> for it by default, but I am not sure I want to do that unless we can
> >> maybe say goodbye to it for the big picture too.
> >
> > I have decided now to drop all support for tcpwrap from systemd, for the
> > next release. For those who believe that tcpd is really a good idea
> > (yuck!) not much is lost though, they can just plug in tcpd into
> > systemd, the way they did it with good old inetd, too, hence we are not
> > taking anything away there, we are pretty much compatible with what
> > inetd supported there (or actually: didn't support there).
> >
> > I am not going to file a feature for Fedora, to remove support for it
> > entirely across the whole distro. I still think dropping it is the right
> > thing to do, but I don't think it's a good use of my own time, to fight
> > this through... I'd be happy though if somebody else would pick this
> > up. Looking at the current FESCO members I am not entirely sure though
> > whether a proposal to disable libwrap would have a chance in the current
> > cycle though. (also, M. Miller kinda supported the proposal, which as
> > history tells us means he probably is _not_ going to vote for it in the
> > end...)
> >
> > It's a pity though that nobody in Fedora is actively working on getting
> > rid of legacy cruft. I really wished we had some people who oversee
> > deprecating things more proactively, figure out how to deprecate things,
> > write stub code to provide smooth transitions, write release notes and
> > so on. Being at the bleeding edge of things also means deciding that
> > some things really should go, from time to time... Besides deprecating
> > old cruft like libwrap, this would also mean removing all the old crap
> > from comps "standard" that we still install by default (894110)...
> 
> Interesting! You sent the email starting this thread a mere 4 days
> ago, two of those a weekend. You've not given it a chance to even go
> to FESCo meeting for discussion. Did you send it in the same way to
> the rest of the distros that depend, or are soon to depend on, systemd
> now.... SuSE, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu etc giving them no chance to
> discuss the impact before you unceremoniously tear a feature, for
> some, out?
> 
> Ultimately I've long stopped using tcpwrappers (a decade or so ago in
> fact) so it doesn't bother me what so ever but I know of a LOT of
> people that use it, rightly or wrongly, extensively.
> 
> systemd is now, or soon will be, a core component of pretty much all
> major and minor distributions out there and it's no longer just about
> you Lennart and your thoughts of whether it's "Yuck!" or not, you are
> now similar to the kernel and like the kernel you should have a proper
> deprecation process that is not just what you, Kay and who ever the
> main developers decide is cool or not at the time. You should give us
> and distributions in general more than 4 days to deal with what lives
> or not. Ultimately systemd is no longer in nappies and is all grown
> up, while you are still it's father it's now a teenager and needs to
> be somewhat independent of it's father, it has friends that now depend
> on it and there's should be a central place where these architectural
> changes and deprecation intentions are announced, discussed and in the
> case of deprecation given more than 4 days before removal.

+1

Simo,

-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York