Package: inetutils-telnet Severity: wishlist As discussed in https://bugs.debian.org/982253 netkit-telnet is not (actively) maintained upstream or in Debian. Inetutils may not be the state of the art as a well-maintained project, but at least there are upstream releases and good packaging in Debian.
I believe 'apt-get install telnet' should install inetutils-telnet
rather than netkit-telnet going forward. Once bullseye is released it
is a good time to make the switch. I'm opening this bug to find out
what needs to be done in order to make this happen, if there is
agreement that this is a good idea.
1) What needs to be done in d/control for the inetutils-telnet package?
Should it 'Provides: telnet' and 'Replaces: telnet'? Anything more?
2) Is it required for 1) that the netkit-telnet package is removed from
Debian? Maybe the package could live on and ship 'netkit-telnet'
instead of the 'telnet' package? Perhaps that package could continue to
live on in unstable, but never ship with a future release in favor of
inetutils-telnet.
3) The implementations needs to be analyzed for compatibility. The
--usage outputs are like this:
Usage: telnet.netkit [-4] [-6] [-8] [-E] [-L] [-a] [-d] [-e char] [-l user]
[-n tracefile] [ -b addr ] [-r] [host-name [port]]
Usage: inetutils-telnet [-468acdEKLrx?V] [-e CHAR] [-l USER] [-n FILE]
[-k REALM] [-X ATYPE] [--ipv4] [--ipv6] [--binary] [--login]
[--no-rc] [--debug] [--escape=CHAR] [--no-escape] [--no-login]
[--user=USER] [--binary-output] [--trace=FILE] [--rlogin]
[--encrypt] [--realm=REALM] [--disable-auth=ATYPE] [--help]
[--usage] [--version] [HOST [PORT]]
A quick comparison indicates that inetutils-telnet is missing the '-b
addr' command. I'll try to verify that the parameter actually does the
intended thing in netkit-telnet, and then see if I can implement that
upstream in inetutils.
Further feature comparisons would be welcome though.
4) The man page for inetutils-telnet is less useful than the
netkit-telnet man page. I think this could be improved upstream in
inetutils, and will work on that.
Similar thoughts applies to inetutils-telnetd vs netkit-telnetd too, but
I wanted to start with something simple so I chose inetutils-telnet.
Since telnet and telnetd is shipped from the same netkit-telnet source
package, it may that if 2) is involved above, something needs to happen
to inetutils-telnetd too, and then so be it.
Thoughts?
/Simon
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