Perhaps for historical reasons, networkmanager pulls one of dhcp or dhcpcd packages. Since version 1.0 it has its own internal DHCP client, so none of external clients are required.
You can see in configure.ac that it's not the case, they are still offering support for dhcpcd/dhclient
(In reply to Pacho Ramos from comment #1) > You can see in configure.ac that it's not the case, they are still offering > support for dhcpcd/dhclient Correct. But they're not required. I force removed dhclient and NM works happily with its internal DHCP client. My point is that it should be allowed to disable both USE flags.
The configure will try to use dhclient if we try to disable both: # Fallback if test "$with_dhclient" = "no" -a "$with_dhcpcd" = "no"; then AC_MSG_WARN([Could not find a suitable DHCP client, falling back to dhclient]) with_dhclient=/sbin/dhclient fi http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/tree/configure.ac?h=nm-1-0 :/
Indeed. But that's OK. It builds fine with that warning. And at runtime it automatically chooses internal client.
i've tested internal client and it works quite well (explicitly via dhcp=internal in conf). This is the case for uspstream report.
I can confirm that the internal DHCP client works ok. It can also be manually configured via NetworkManger.conf. [main] dhcp=internal
The situation didn't change for 1.2, also, it is done in this way on purpose: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768205#c1 Then, I am ok with allowing any dhcpcd+dhclient combination (even if I am wondering about completely drop dhcpcd support as it is unmaintained and prone to gain more and more bugs like bug 563938). But I am not sure about how to handle the scenario of people trying to disable both (dhcpcd and dhclient) USE flags... as they will lead to a automagic dependency (if /sbin/dhclient is found at buildtime, it will be used, if not... I am unsure if it will fail by default or... :/) One option would be to try to change: # Fallback if test "$with_dhclient" = "no" -a "$with_dhcpcd" = "no"; then AC_MSG_WARN([Could not find a suitable DHCP client, falling back to dhclient]) with_dhclient=/sbin/dhclient fi To force it to fail, something like: # Fallback if test "$with_dhclient" = "no" -a "$with_dhcpcd" = "no"; then AC_MSG_WARN([Could not find a suitable DHCP client, falling back to dhclient]) with_dhclient= fi (or even unset it) Maybe in that way no dhclient support will be built ever but... what will do then? Can you test (also at runtime) after playing with that "Fallback" part to make it not fallback and let it continue only with the internal dhcp? Thanks a lot
It looks like this commit https://github.com/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/e9bf87805cf968ef4542fefb123384dbf4b5f98c which is in v1.6.0 enables the internal DHCP client by default if both dhclient and dhcpcd are disabled. I don't see a REQUIRED_USE or anything that forces one of them to be on, and in fact when you disable both NetworkManager's configure prints: > DHCP clients (default internal): > dhcpcanon: no > dhclient: no > dhcpcd: no So, marking as fixed.
