netcat silently fails without error message when not using -v

[Jon Forsberg]

$ nc localhost 1234

$ nc -v localhost 1234
nc: connect to localhost port 1234 (tcp) failed: Connection refused

even without the -v option I expect nc to report any errors to stderr instead of just exiting. i sometimes use nc together with tar as a simple file transfer tool and its pretty handy to know what is going on.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: netcat-openbsd 1.105-7ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-31.50-generic 4.4.13
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-31-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.376
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Sep 29 12:37:32 2016
Dependencies:
 gcc-6-base 6.0.1-0ubuntu1
 libbsd0 0.8.2-1
 libc6 2.23-0ubuntu3
 libgcc1 1:6.0.1-0ubuntu1
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: netcat-openbsd
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Heinrich Schuchardt (xypron)]

Debian adopts the package source from OpenBSD. Please, address the OpenBSD maintainer to have your suggestion considered. Cf. https://github.com/openbsd/, https://www.openbsd.org/report.html.