Termux-packages: Package request: gnu-netcat

[4679]

GNU rewrite of netcat.
http://netcat.sourceforge.net/

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/gnu-netcat/

[fornwall]

Note that the lightweight version of nc is installed by default, but that lacks many features.

Perhaps the netcat from openbsd is better to package than gnu netcat, since gnu netcat seems to be a dead project with no release since 2004?

I've packaged a test build of the openbsd netcat available at:

http://fornwall.net/netcat_1.105_arm.deb

Could you try that out and see if it works ok for you?

[4679]

It works well,thanks.

[Hypoon]

Are you aware of ncat? It's distributed with nmap, and it's what I've been using in Termux for a while now.

[fornwall]

@Hypoon Good point! The ncat program is up to date and is maintained (which gnu-netcat is not) and portable (which openbsd-netcat is not), so perhaps that should be the netcat of choice in Termux?

I'm thinking about splitting ncat into a separate package from nmap, and setting up netcat as a symlink to ncat, so that people trying to run netcat are prompted with

The program 'netcat' is not installed. Install it by executing:
    apt install ncat

and can invoke is as netcat for familiarity.

@Hypoon @4679 What do you think about that?

[4679]

Sounds great.

[fornwall]

There is now a netcat package available containing the ncat implementation from the nmap project.

It contains the ncat binary and man page, as well as having netcat setup as a symlink to ncat for discoverability. Thanks for the help and feedback!

[4679]

Great work!

[Hypoon]

@fornwall , I don't have any strong opinion regarding splitting ncat into its own package.

On one hand, a separate package is easier to find by someone looking specifically for netcat.

On the other hand, I assume this means ncat will no longer be provided by the nmap package. That's rather unintuitive, in my opinion. When installing an nmap package, I expect to get the full suite: nmap, ncat, nping, and ndiff (and zenmap, if X is in the picture).

I'm hardly an expert on the apt package management system... but I can imagine a way to get the best of both worlds: have separate packages for each tool, plus a separate package for the whole suite that pulls in the tools' packages as dependencies. I don't know if that's the Debian way of doing things, but it seems practical to me.

[fornwall]

@Hypoon Good point! I'll make nmap depend on netcat, so when installing nmap you will get ncat installed as a dependency!