drop net-tools from %base-packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Hello!

While preparing a new release of GNU Inetutils, I read the following
comment in ./gnu/system.scm

         net-tools                        ; XXX: remove when Inetutils suffices

and looked into what possible tools Guix would want from inetutils that
aren't available already.

I'm not sure how to best find out what tools are actually used by Guix,
but on my system the following tools appear to be installed:

root@hamster ~# ls -la /run/current-system/profile/*bin/|grep net-tool|awk '{ 
print $9 }'
netstat
route
arp
ipmaddr
iptunnel
mii-tool
nameif
plipconfig
rarp
slattach
root@hamster ~# 

Is anything else from net-tools used?

Most of the tools are esoteric.  I suspect the more well-known tools are
'route', 'netstat', 'arp' and 'rarp'.

My Debian buster laptop has none of the tools above installed.  In fact,
the net-tools package is not even installed by default.  It seems all
uses have transitioned over to the modern 'iproute' suite.

Thus, I suggest Guix drop net-tools from its required tools.  People who
are nostalgic about the tools can install them separately, just like on
Debian.

I wouldn't know how to comprehensible test the patch below, but I'm sure
people will notice if there are problems if it is applied. :-)

/Simon

From 3ac6e4c9853a0cbc6fb42a2d263bb03bb9583c34 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Simon Josefsson <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2020 18:05:47 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] system: Drop net-tools from %BASE-PACKAGES (replaced by
 iproute2).

* gnu/system.scm (%base-packages): Remove net-tools.
---
 gnu/system.scm | 1 -
 1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/gnu/system.scm b/gnu/system.scm
index abdbb081e6..fbc72ada3d 100644
--- a/gnu/system.scm
+++ b/gnu/system.scm
@@ -574,7 +574,6 @@ of PROVENANCE-SERVICE-TYPE to its services."
          iw wireless-tools
 
          iproute
-         net-tools                        ; XXX: remove when Inetutils suffices
          man-db
          info-reader                     ;the standalone Info reader (no Perl)
 
-- 
2.20.1

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