Bug 11596

Hi

net-tools 1.60+git20161116.90da8a0-1 (as shipped in Debian Stretch) has changed some utilities output as per this notice:

net-tools (1.60+git20161116.90da8a0-1) unstable; urgency=medium
After 15 years without upstream development, net-tools is being worked on
again, fixing many long-standing issues.
The bad news is that the output of many commands has changed, and it is sure
to break scripts that relied on parsing it.
If you have customs scripts that use any of these commands, please make sure
they still work after this upgrade:
netstat, ifconfig, ipmaddr, iptunnel, mii-tool, nameif, plipconfig, rarp,
route, slattach, arp.
Apologies in advance for the trouble that this may cause, but maintaining a
separate version of net-tools just to keep the old format is something I am
not able to do.
-- Martín Ferrari tincho@debian.org Mon, 26 Dec 2016 05:29:25 +0000

For instance ifconfig output differs between Busybox (up to 1.30) and Debian Stretch; respectively:
inet addr 192.168.1.101  Bcast 192.168.1.255  Mask 255.255.255.0
inet 192.168.1.101  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255


Would setting a compatibility config on old/new format make sense for these utilities?