Revert the change of network interfaces family from String to Integer

[Apollon77]

Version

18.x

Platform

any

Subsystem

dns?

What steps will reproduce the bug?

see #41431 (review)

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

always

What is the expected behavior?

The family is backward compatible a string and not an integer thatbreaks many modules

What do you see instead?

family is an integer breaking many libraries

Additional information

Please see the comments in the linked PR and consider a "fix" fo this breaking change

[joe-hilling]

Seeing a lot a pain coming out of this breaking change.

[richardlau]

cc @nodejs/tsc I think I'd lean towards reverting #41431, even though reverting the change would itself be breaking. Or at least restoring the family attribute on network interface objects to a string.

[Trott]

cc @nodejs/tsc I think I'd lean towards reverting #41431, even though reverting the change would itself be breaking. Or at least restoring the family attribute on network interface objects to a string.

I tentatively agree.

@aduh95 @mcollina

[BethGriggs]

Agree, this change has been more disruptive than I think we'd have liked. I'd be +1 on a revert.

I have seen that some of the ecosystem has already spent time investigating and adjusting to this change. Would a full revert cause additional disruption at this point? I'm curious if there's a way to adequately mitigate the impact of the change without causing further disruption. Would the suggestions in #41431 (comment) be sufficient?

[Apollon77]

I assume (at least from the changes I have "seen" and because of needed nodejs backward compatibility) most simply added it as alternative to support both variants ... So a revert should (!) for most just lead to a "dead code OR clause"