I don't think the goal was to move them out of base.  I think what's
wanted is them to have a smaller footprint.  This functionality is
needed in small systems.  Tho, hardware is catching up.  In some
places we've got 32M of system RAM!

-=erik.


On 2/26/07, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:03:00 -0600
> David Young <dyoung@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you have any ideas what can be done to these huge programs in the
> > base system to make them small yet reasonably effective on an
> > IPv4/IPv6 router/bridge?
> >
> >         * wpa_supplicant
> >         * hostapd
> >         * dig / host
> >         * dhclient
> >         * dhcpd
> >         * netstat
> >         * pfctl
> >         * tcpdump
> >
> Which should be in pkgsrc instead?  (I'd ask "which should be in an
> optional syspkg instead, but that would open a different thread...)
> My candidates would include hostapd, dhcpd, and tcpdump.  I might
> include dig, but I think it's part of bind and hence harder to move.
> OTOH, maybe we shouldn't have any of bind in the base system.  Besides,
> it's such a generally useful debuggin tool.
>
> My rationale for these choices: they're specialized applications needed
> by only a few hosts.
>
> I'm surprised there's no simpler dhclient in pkgsrc.
>
>
>                 --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
>