Friday, January 4, 2008

netpack-gpack - why this name?

netpack comprises currently gpack.

First release was packaged as netpack-gpack-v0.8.tar.gz; main sources are netpack/gpack/gPackCount-v0.8.

The actual executable is gpackcount, which was primarily built to snif my own intranet traffic.
My original CVS sources were placed at gprog/pNetPack/, where some utilities like gPackServer and gPackClient were stored, together with an AS (Autonomous System) text compiler.

As the time went by, I didn't have time to complete the client / server functionality, and I continued to use gpackcount, making several enhancements.

gpackcount turned out to be quite useful for the purposes, but had initially an anoying tweak: it greatly depended on installed libpcap (known as pcap, refer to www.tcpdump.org).
It turned out fairly easier to integrate libpcap in my own wrapper lib known as libgpcap, needing just one primary source code, instead of a bunch of separate pieces.
  • netpack/gpack/o_sources/libpcap-0.7.2-orig.tar
  • netpack/gpack/o_sources/libpcap-diff.patch
The original libpcap (version 0.7.2, which I chose, most stable!) is part of the package, as well as the slight differences applied to make it work cross-platform (at least on many different Linux flavours).
There is also a guideline for further development, the include files that can be installed:
  • netpack/gpack/o_sources/libpcap-0.7.2-include.tar
Now back to the name: why not just netpack? There are lots of trade-marks referring to netpack, netpackage, and other variant words. gpack is the result of gathering libpcap, libgpcap, and the main application distributed, gpackcount -- so it got named netpack-gpack.

That's about it.
Enjoy!