Libifconfig will implement most things ifconfig does today, and it is my intention to reduce complexity of future ifconfig maintenance and development by refactoring ifconfig to use it once the library stabilizes more. (Some work is done on this already)
This is an initial patch to get feedback on the first baby steps, and maybe get it into the tree, which would hopefully make it easier to experiment with and increase amount of feedback.
The API is not currently stable. It may change entirely at any time, but it's safe to experiment with.
See https://github.com/Savagedlight/libifconfig/tree/master/examples for basic usage examples.
The manpage is nonexistent at the moment, but between the examples and documentation in the header files you should find your way around.
This looks like it's more for debugging than for an end user. Maybe put this under boot verbose? The reason is that it's not an error until it's an error, meaning that if we're going to wait for the device when it's not there yet, then printing errors is confusing. Putting it under boot verbose is a nice way for people to get insight into why a boot may be stalled...