bug#38666: Maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option)

bug#38666: Maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option)

[Danny Milosavljevic]

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Hi,

maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option).

The latest official release on Sourceforge doesn't have it but Debian includes a patch to add it.

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bug#38666: Maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option)

[Leo Famulari]

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On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 02:46:07AM +0100, Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option).
> 
> The latest official release on Sourceforge doesn't have it but Debian includes a patch to add it.

There is a more featured and maintained netcat implementation (ncat)
provided by the nmap package. It does support IPv6.

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bug#38666: Maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option)

[Danny Milosavljevic]

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Hmm, would it make sense to deprecate the "netcat" package then--with a hint on
how to get the functionality (by installing nmap)?

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bug#38666: Maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option)

[Marius Bakke]

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Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org> writes:

> Hmm, would it make sense to deprecate the "netcat" package then--with a hint on
> how to get the functionality (by installing nmap)?

There is no shortage of netcats in Guix.

In addition to 'ncat', there is 'netcat-openbsd', and LibreSSL also
includes a 'nc' executable; all of which support IPv6 to my knowledge.

I don't have an opinion on favoring one over the other.  But it would be
good to deprecate the unmaintained GNU netcat with something that works.

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bug#38666: Maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option)

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi,

Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> maybe netcat should support ipv6 ("-6" option).
>
> The latest official release on Sourceforge doesn't have it but Debian includes a patch to add it.

Debian doesn't seem to be using GNU netcat anymore; their control file
[0] mentions the home page to be [1], and the version is at 1.10, not
that this is very useful.

I wouldn't remove the package since it seems to be still functioning
despite seemingly abandoned.

[0]  https://salsa.debian.org/debian/netcat/-/blob/master/debian/control
[1]  http://www.stearns.org/nc/