Display BGP gateway mode in show protocol output

[Sébastien PARISOT]

Hello David,

To be honest I expected this kind of answer for the first 2 patches :) I thought this one would be ok as it only adds a new field/line in the output and do not touch the existing output, but sure I understand. Relying on text output is always fragile and any change is risky.

Thanks for the feedback.

--
Sébastien

________________________________________
De : Bird-users <bird-users-bounces at network.cz> de la part de David Petera via Bird-users <bird-users at network.cz>
Envoyé : vendredi 5 septembre 2025 15:55
À : bird-users at network.cz
Objet : Re: Display BGP gateway mode in show protocol output

Hello Sébastien!

Thanks for sending us these patches, but unfortunately it would not be wise to change BIRD's CLI output right now.

We discussed it in our team and the the primary reason is this:

Since BIRD does not yet have well defined API for communication, most automation and tooling around BIRD (including our own) relies on the exact format of the CLI output.
These changes would/could break the tooling around BIRD and cause lot of headache for little gain.

We know that this situation is not ideal and thus API for BIRD is being worked on.
Once finished we can improve the CLI output without major consequences.

Hope you understand, why we can not accept these patches right now.

Wish you a great weekend and happy routing!
David

David Petera (he/him) | BIRD Tech Support | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.

On 8/25/25 14:35, Sébastien PARISOT wrote:

Hello BIRD team!

This simple patch (for branch master) adds a field for the BGP channel gateway mode (direct or recursive) setting in show protocol output. It is is a useful information to have in some troubleshooting scenario.

Example:

bird> show protocol all bgp_test
Name             Proto      Table                        State  Since                Info
bgp_test           BGP        ---                          up     2025-08-12 15:11:54  Established
  BGP state:          Established
[...]
  Channel ipv6
    State:          UP
[...]
    Gateway: recursive
[...]

Thanks!
--
Sébastien