[FEATURE] More precise types

[joshwd36]

There are several cases where data is stored in strings, where a more precise type would be more appropriate. I have tried to collect all of these, along with suggestions for the type. Some of these have obvious representations from third party crates, and some less so, and of course we should be wary of adding public dependencies

Connection UUIDs

Connection UUIDs are currently stored as strings, but as the name suggests they are guaranteed to be a valid UUID. The UUID crate is ubiquitous and stable, so I think this would be the right type to use.

This could also be used for BSSIDs

Mac Addresses

The simplest solution would be to use the macaddr crate, which provides both EUI-48 and EUI-64 formats. I'm not well versed enough to know whether NetworkManager will ever return an EUI-64 address, but either the MacAddr struct or MacAddr6 enum would work.

IP Addresses

NetworkManager generally returns IP Addresses in CIDR format, and from my search I couldn't find a crate that simply stores the address and prefix together, so I think having our own version would be best. This could be in the form:

pub struct Ipv4Address {
   pub address: Ipv4Addr,
   pub prefix: u8,
}

pub struct Ipv6Address {
   pub address: Ipv6Addr,
   pub prefix: u8,
}

There's potentially a future discussion to have about any additional features of these structs, e.g. Should they implement Eq or Ord, and should those implementations take into account the prefix?

Timestamps

SavedConnection has a timestamp_unix field. It may be worthwhile to use something like Chrono or jiff to represent this. Since there isn't necessarily an ecosystem consensus on this, this probably shouldn't be a priority

Paths

SavedConnection also has a filename property. It may be better to store this as a PathBuf instead

Priority Maps

VlanConfig has ingress_priority_map and egress_priority_map. The mapping may be better represented by a struct containing to and from fields

Enums

There are various string fields which may be better as enums. A (non-exhaustive) list is here:

• SavedConntion.connection_type
• SettingsSummary::Wifi.mode
• SettingsSummary::Wifi.band
• SettingsSummary::Wifi.mac_randomization
• SettingsSummary::Gsm.pin_flags
• SettingsSummary::Cmda.password_flags
• SettingsSummary::Bluetooth.bt_type
• WifiSecuritySummary::eap_methods
• BluetoothDevice.bt_caps
• NetworkInfo.mode
• NetworkInfo.security
• NetworkInfo.status
• SavedConnectionBrief.connection_type
• VlanConfig.flags
• VpnDetails::OpenVpn.protocol