Apparently NetworkManager recently gained support for macvlan interfaces. I notice it also supports macvtap, and the patch shows it already had some support for tun/tap devices.
I thought tap interfaces are normally created by VM software. Then the interface can be joined to a bridge. Or either of tun/tap can have an IP address assigned, again often done by VM software like virt-manager/libvirt. For macvtap, there isn't even anything that NetworkManager could configure!
Alternatively, tun/tap devices are used for userspace network tunnels such as OpenVPN. But I don't understand why you would configure a raw tun/tap device using NetworkManager. You still need to run something like OpenVPN to drive data through the tun/tap device.
I just can't make sense of it.
Question: Can anyone think of a reason to create tun/tap/macvtap devices using NetworkManager?
Glossary
macvlan is an alternative to bridging for networking Virtual Machines. Apparently it avoids some overhead. I haven't worked out the corresponding limitations.
tun/tap network interfaces provide a corresponding character device, which allows virtual machine implementations to read/write network packets from the interface. tap works at layer 2 (ethernet); tun only works at layer 3 (IP).
macvtap provides the same character device, but packets either come out a physical device the macvtap was bound to, or are bridged to a different macvtap/macvlan device on the same physical interface.
It is sometimes useful to create a macvlan interface for the host as well.