[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative

[Andreas Henriksson]

Control: severity -1 wishlist

Hi,

I think this severity is better as wishlist until iwd 1.0 is released
with further details below.

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 10:09:21PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Package: network-manager
> Version: 1.14.4-4
> Severity: important
[...]
> network-manager is compiled with support for iwd,
> but the package declares an absolute dependency on wpasupplicant.

Please note that from a "debian stable perspective" iwd should still be
considered "tech preview". There are no promises about any kind of
interface stability until version 1.0 is released (notably the dbus IPC
interface which NM uses). See also #911057 related to (the lack of)
interface stability promises.

There are also a number of features still missing in both iwd and the
iwd-plugin of NM before the iwd code-path can compete with and be a full
(production-ready) replacement for wpasupplicant.
- iwd is still working on implementing support for "complex" wifi setups
  (and I don't have access to any such networks for testing and
  evaluation).
- network-manager is still missing support for things like connecting to
  hidden SSIDs while using iwd.

Having said all that, iwd should probably work well for most users.
(But at the same time I'd also recommend keeping wpasupplicant
installed for those cases where you do run into a situation where
you can't connect using iwd and has no other connectivity options
available.)

> 
> Please add iwd as alternative to wpasupplicant.

In support of this statement, I'd like to think of potential drawbacks
and try to argue why they aren't problematic.

If the dependency was described as 'wpasupplicant | iwd' the only
problematic situation I would forsee would be when someone first
installed iwd, then later installed NM (and assumed it would drag in the
default dependency).

Given the total number of users of iwd are currently "almost
non-existant" (compared to NM userbase) the cases where the above
problem will happen is also thus non-existant.
(current numbers according to popcon: 34 installed, 24 vote. See:
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=iwd )

My conclusion is thus that the dependency could likely safely be
described as 'wpasupplicant | iwd' to cater for the very small minority
(subset) of iwd users who wishes to not have wpasupplicant installed
(and prepare for a future where iwd >= 1.0 and NM iwd-plugin is also in
better shape).

> Also, please consider relaxing to only recommend this combo,
> as network-manager is certainly usable without those available, only
> (as described when seemingly this was tightened in 0.6.0-1)
> "necessary for all encrypted connections."

>From my own experience I can tell that there aren't enough volunteers
taking on the support burden of downgrading things which could
theoretically be recommends instead of depends for very popular and
widely used software like NM. There are just too many people still
disabling recommends without knowing what they're getting themselves
into and then complaining "it's broken".

The minority of people who really can't spare the storage space to have
wpasupplicant installed while unused (and want to avoid maintaning their
own fork of the package) will find the solution here:
https://packages.debian.org/unstable/equivs

Even if we assume counting the people who want neither would double the
number of people who would rather just have iwd, this graph should make
it pretty clear why "a minor inconvenience for NM users" far outweighs
"a major inconvenience for iwd/none users":
https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=iwd%2Cnetwork-manager&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1
Even if only 1% (which I'm pretty sure is way to low) of users are in
the 'install without recommends and complain'-camp, that's still alot
more users than iwd*2.

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson