[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#564034: netcat: -q flag causes non-standard behaviour

[Benedikt Spranger]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:57:03 +0100 Rob Gom <rgom.debian at gmail.com>
wrote:

> According to the bug #45675, there was -q flag introduced in Debian
> package.
The -q flag introduced by Debian is completely superfluous and harmful.
It causes a lot of trouble in a cross platform environment.
Furthermore the implementation changes netcat to a non standard
behaviour.
 
> I had to introduce workarounds in my multiplatform scripts:
>   NC_WORKAROUND=`nc -h 2>&1 | grep -c -F "q secs"` # in Debian there
> is -q0 flag, which imposes different default behaviour
>   if [ $NC_WORKAROUND == 0 ]; then # Fedora
>     Q0_FLAG="";
>   else # Debian
>     Q0_FLAG="-q0";
>   fi

This is a crude duct tape solution to cover a bug in netcat.

> According to the last comment of abovementioned bug:
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=45675#10
> there was a bug upstream, which has been also upstream fixed (thus
> making -q flag unnecessary).

Introducing a flag (and non standard behavior) instead of fixing a bug
is a bad solution. Introducing crude hacks in a couple of programs to
plaster the introduced stupidity makes it harmful and *really* bad.

> Please remove -q flag from Debian package, making it more upstream
> compliant, or correct me if I'm wrong.
I can second that. Please remove the -q flag. At least make "-q 0" the
standard behavior (patch below).

Thanks,
    Bene

--- netcat-1.10.orig/netcat.c   2010-04-07 15:34:17.591839798 +0200
+++ netcat-1.10/netcat.c        2010-04-07 15:34:30.191855622 +0200
@@ -181,7 +181,7 @@
 USHORT o_verbose = 0;
 unsigned int o_wait = 0;
 USHORT o_zero = 0;
-int o_quit = -1; /* 0 == quit-now; >0 == quit after o_quit seconds */
+int o_quit = 0; /* 0 == quit-now; >0 == quit after o_quit seconds */
 int o_keepalive = 0;
 #ifdef IP_TOS
 unsigned char o_tos = 0;