[pkg-go] Bug#877030: ITP: pat -- Winlink client with basic messaging capabilities

[Antoine Beaupre]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Antoine Beaupre <anarcat at debian.org>

* Package name    : pat
  Version         : 0.3.0
  Upstream Author : Martin Hebnes Pedersen <martin.h.pedersen at gmail.com>
* URL             : http://getpat.io/
* License         : MIT (Expat)
  Programming Lang: Go
  Description     : Winlink client with basic messaging capabilities

Pat is a cross platform Winlink client with basic messaging
capabilities.

It is the primary sandbox/prototype application for the wl2k-go
project, and provides both a command line interface and a responsive
(mobile-friendly) web interface.

It is mainly developed for Linux, but are also known to run on OS X,
Windows and Android.

Features

 * Message composer/reader (basic mailbox functionality).
 * Auto-shrink image attachments.
 * Post position reports with location from local GPS, browser
   location or manual entry.
 * Rig control (using hamlib) for winmor PTT and QSY.
 * CRON-like syntax for execution of scheduled commands (e.g. QSY or
   connect).
 * Built in http-server with web interface (mobile friendly).
 * Git style command line interface.
 * Listen for P2P connections using multiple modes concurrently.
 * AX.25, telnet, WINMOR and ARDOP support.
 * Experimental gzip message compression

----

I have used pat and it works pretty well. It's the first time I'm
able to use WinLink in a meaningful way in Linux. I remember trying
the Windows binary in Wine a while back and it was really painful. Now
there's a nice interface, both web GUI and commandline. I have yet to
test AX-25, but i'm hopeful to get good results.

There are a lot of vendored dependencies present in the source,
however:

github.com/bndr/gotabulate
github.com/elazarl/go-bindata-assetfs
github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify
github.com/gorhill/cronexpr
github.com/gorilla/context
github.com/gorilla/mux
github.com/gorilla/websocket
github.com/howeyc/gopass
github.com/jteeuwen/go-bindata
github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go
github.com/mattn/go-runewidth
github.com/microcosm-cc/bluemonday
github.com/nfnt/resize
github.com/peterh/liner
github.com/spf13/pflag
golang.org/x/crypto
golang.org/x/net
golang.org/x/sys
golang.org/x/text

I'm unsure which one are already in debian and which ones are not.

Of the above, only the following are missing from Debian, which is
pretty awesome:

github.com/bndr/gotabulate
github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go

and the latter is basically the library backend for pat.

I would be happy to comaintain this or delegate maintainership: just
scratching an itch here. I would also love to get help from the golang
packages as I have never packaged golang stuff before.

An equivalent free software of this is "paclink-unix", but it's
apparently less user-friendly. A comparative of different winlink
clients is available here:

https://www.winlink.org/ClientSoftware