Package: netcat Version: 1.10-38 Severity: important
Debian netcat has an extra -q option. This is not a problem except that the default for the -q option (o_quit in the source) makes netcat behave differently on Debian than on other systems. This causes portability problems in scripts--you can even see the effects in Debian packages: libvirt and virt-manager (and I'm sure many others) both have to have extra patches to set '-q 0' (which should be the default) to keep things compatible. Incidentally this causes libvirt to be incompatible with RedHat/Fedora based machines (since it does it in a not-so-smart way). This can all be fixed by setting o_quit to 0 instead of -1 in this line in netcat.c: int o_quit = -1; /* 0 == quit-now; >0 == quit after o_quit seconds */ This will make Debian's netcat compatible with the rest of the world and will remove the needs for countless patches/hacks in other Debian packages and will make writing cross platform scripts that use netcat *much* easier. -David -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.33-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages netcat depends on: ii netcat-traditional 1.10-38 TCP/IP swiss army knife netcat recommends no packages. netcat suggests no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
