>On 12/03/2014 21:48, Theo de Raadt wrote: >> How many usage cases have you tested? >> >> All of them? > >Where is the regression suite for nc located? >I don't see it anywhere under src/regress/. >Please don't tell me you don't have it.
There is no regression suite in our tree. Various mailing lists over the last two years will quickly provide an impression that there is (already) substantial pain over the divergence between 3 variants of this utility. Convergence has not yet occured in any form. Some history. The original Hobbit code was very unrefined and non-specific, with many forks already at that time. It was not free enough. One specific path was chosen out of that mess to create the first free version in OpenBSD, hi Eric Jackson, a monkey. Years later, a FSF subgroup (of some sort) created a complicated version with new features, without trying to be compliant on the base featureset right off the bat, onlu attempting convergence later. So now it is a righteous mess. If you use it, be narrow in your requests and you get what you want. Be more specific, and they behave differently. The reality is that we don't know where people are using this code, except we know usage is exceedingly common. The 3 different codebases are reused, patched, and land in different places. Certainly OpenBSD-based nc works different when found in Debian or FreeBSD, some people care less about unification than their specific feature. Yet the usage of this tool matters greatly operationally. In spite of the minimal cohesive featureset being so poorly defined. Sometimes things like this take time to resolve. Give it another decade, unless someone starts to care greatly. Primarily, we do not want to make it worse for a large contingent of people people who rely on it, at the behest of one individual's patch. Not saying your 2nd diff is right. But step by step you are learning that you can't tell if it is right, either. The standard of care should be high, but the atmosphere has not got anyone caring enough to ensure that the standard is met. Your diff might make it worse. Sorry for my harsh tones initially, but this is a very important point. Upon the next upgrade, someone's infrastructure could fail on this point. >> The standard is high. Rise to it. > >Really? I couldn't tell looking at the code. >I am working at a standard that is beyond what you can possibly imagine. Indeed. Welcome to the real world. Sorry.
