allow custom method in "/etc/network/interfaces"

[Richard Huddleston]

we have several custom networking scripts, and find it would be easiest to handle them with a custom "method" in "/etc/network/interfaces" . we can't just add scripts to if-up.d, because we need strong ordering of command execution. examples would be adding macvlans, and ip tunnels. for example, we need pre-up in "/etc/network/interfaces" to run before ANY other scripts , because we do an ip link creation there. there are builtin "methods" which cover some of the functionality we want, but clearly this doesn't scale like a plugin based architecture would. unfortunately, there is no easy way to plug in a custom method for handling these networking stanzas. thus, we have to write stuff like this for each interface.

auto vmac-ha
iface vmac-ha inet manual
        [ NORMAL ENTRIES ]
        pre-up my-vmac-helper
        up my-vmac-helper
        down my-vmac-helper
        post-down my-vmac-helper

it would be MUCH easier to have something like this

auto vmac-ha
iface vmac-ha inet custom my-vmac-helper
        [ NORMAL ENTRIES ]

[Andrej Shadura (andrew.sh)]

Richard, I have this on my plan, so if I have enough time this feature will be soon implemented.