it seem that the user already had the chance to sets minion id manually above a few lines?

I agree this salt/config.py function is complex... thats why I started to break out the extra logic into the util/network.py

I feel that the salt/utils/network.py def get_hostnames() does a /solid/ job of collecting the information... And Im happy with how _sort_hostnames(hostname_list) orders the possible hostnames / ipaddresses from most desirable to least.

@basepi seemed to want a config option to toggle this patch, thats why I havent migrated the underlying stuff as of yet.