libnasl: outdated and broken

[mojca (Mojca Miklavec)]

When checking the ticket #39383, it turns out that apart from #38114, libnasl is broken as well.

I applied two naive patches (see attachments), but the software seems soooo awfully outdated. And given that there exists the openvas-libnasl port and that nobody reported a broken port, I strongly suspect that it could make a lot more sense to remove these nessus ports unless they are still needed (but they aren't usable anyway).

I don't think that my libtool patch works properly anyway since even after applying it, the build fails with

/bin/sh /path/to/work/libnasl/libtool --silent --mode=compile /usr/bin/clang -pipe -pipe -Os -arch x86_64  `sh ./cflags`  -lrpcsvc  `/opt/local/bin/nessus-config --libs` -o libnasl.la nasl_packet_forgery.lo nasl_socket.lo nasl_crypto.lo nasl_crypto2.lo nasl_http.lo nasl_host.lo nasl_text_utils.lo nasl_nessusd_glue.lo nasl_misc_funcs.lo nasl_cmd_exec.lo capture_packet.lo nasl_grammar.tab.lo nasl_tree.lo nasl_var.lo exec.lo lint.lo nasl_lex_ctxt.lo nasl_func.lo nasl_init.lo strutils.lo regex.lo lfind.lo preparse.lo nasl_server.lo nasl_debug.lo -rpath /opt/local/lib \
	-version-info 4:9:2
libtool: compile: cannot determine name of library object from `libnasl.la'

What do you think about removing these ports?

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to mojca@…:

And given that there exists the openvas-libnasl port and that nobody reported a broken port, I strongly suspect that it could make a lot more sense to remove these nessus ports unless they are still needed (but they aren't usable anyway).

Regarding this point, I'm not sure what the relationship is between the libnasl and openvas-libnasl ports, but neither depends on the other, so what you do with libnasl doesn't affect openvas-libnasl. Also, all of openvas in MacPorts is severely outdated. Newer versions did not build and I could not get any help about that from the developers. See #25338. In the (as of 3.5 years ago) "new" version, openvas-libnasl no longer exists. See #25340.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Cc Me!

[jul_bsd@…]

I agree. That's probably a good case to used replaced_by. There is no more official site (nessus/libnasl switched to closed source in 2005/2006)

Freebsd and openbsd seem to maintained the port for now

• ​http://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/security/nessus-libnasl/Makefile?view=log
• ​http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ports/security/nessus/Makefile

as openvas is a opensource fork of nessus and maintained, I think it's really advisable to switch in replaced_by but need to update openvas* ports.

[jul_bsd@…]

Cc Me!

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

Cc Me!

[mojca (Mojca Miklavec)]

Once again: any objections to deleting the port nessus-core and libnasl? It's unlikely that anyone has those ports installed given that they are broken and that nobody opened any tickets to report the problem.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

Sounds reasonable to me. No objections here.

[mojca (Mojca Miklavec)]

Nessus ports removed in r120502. If anyone needs these ports, they can be added again as long as build problems get fixed.