Re: network-manager-openvpn

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 09:24 -0500, Matt Wilks wrote:
> >> Read slowly, im not talking about routes here, talking about all the
> >> openvpn parameters that are not yet configurable/importable with the
> >> current graphical interface. They could just be configured through or
> >> imported into a single listbox as described above.
> >
> > But that's *horrible* UI and not something I'd like to condone.  I'd
> > rather add the options on an as-needed basis to ensure we don't just
> > dump everything in, and find out that we overloaded the UI with 50
> > options that almost nobody uses.  Which I suspect is true for at least
> > half of openvpn's options, because they did absolutely no work in
> > consolidating them and asking the people who requested the options
> > what they were actually trying to accomplish to constrain the number
> > of switches that openvpn supports.  I'm interested in making it work
> > for 90 - 95% of use-cases, but I don't think we should be designing
> > for that last 5%, especially when it makes things nearly unusable for
> > the other 90.
> 
> This must have been discussed before on this list, but I'm curious the
> reasoning behind making network-manager-openvpn have its own GUI for
> configuration in the first place.  Why not offer functionality similar
> to the Windows/Mac clients that simply manage your connections via
> configuration files?  You'd get all the flexibility of OpenVPN with none
> of the overhead of constantly having to write patches to support /
> debate the inclusion of individual options.

For a number of reasons; 1) not everyone wants to use configuration
files, 2) not everyone is aware of (or cares about) the intricacies of
configuration options, some cannot be used with others, some require
others to be turned on, 3) GUI interfaces are often more approachable
and do not preclude advanced users from using config files anyway, and
4) handling random config files is often problematic, and 5) it wasnt'
integrated into the consistent NetworkManager configuration system.

Now that we have good import/export capability for openvpn, it's not
actually that hard to use your own configs.  If there's options that
people use, we can also whitelist them and add them to import/export
even if they aren't shown in the GUI.

Just because there's a GUI doesn't preclude you from writing a config
file and importing it of course.

Dan