Author Topic: Kermit 95 3.0 beta  (Read 798 times)

davidrg

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Kermit 95 3.0 beta
« on: January 28, 2025, 12:50:07 am »
Kermit 95 3.0 beta 7 is now available for OS/2 2.0 and up! This was made possible by MichalN who provided a lot of help sorting out the various issues that popped up switching from IBM C/C++ 3.6 to Open Watcom 1.9.

This release replaces OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(191) of April 1995 and mostly replaces Kermit 95 2.1.2 of November 2002. Compared to the last OS/2 release of Kermit 95 the following features are currently unavailable due to the compiler switch:
  • SSL/TLS support in the FTP, HTTP and TELNET clients
  • Legacy DES/CAST TELNET encryption
  • The PM Dialer/connection manager (the dialer from K95 2.1.2 should be compatible if needed)
  • Support for FTP Software PC/TCP 1.2 and IBM TCP/IP 1.2.1 (In the unlikely event someone needs these they should work if you grab a few DLLs from K95 2.1.2)
Where possible I hope to get these features back eventually. Aside from the above, this release should be fairly similar to K95 2.1.2, just with a handful of bugs fixed (eg, NetBIOS connections work now) plus all the new features and enhancements from the last 20 years of C-Kermit releases. As with past releases there is no GUI/PM version or SSH support here, though it is at least now possible to add SSH support if there is enough demand.

As far as TCP/IP stacks go, it should work with IBM TCP/IP 2.0 or newer, and I've tested it myself against IBM Internet Connection (Warp 3), IBM TCP/IP 3.1 (Warp 4 Advanced Server) and IBM TCP/IP 4.0 (Warp 4 FixPak 15).

Downloads for OS/2 are available now from Github: https://github.com/davidrg/ckwin/releases/tag/3.0.0beta7

For more information on Kermit 95, see the project readme: https://github.com/davidrg/ckwin?tab=readme-ov-file#readme

Kermit 95 command screen:


Telnet connection to a linux box running htop, on Warp 3 via IBM Internet Connection TCP/IP:

« Last Edit: January 28, 2025, 01:12:26 am by davidrg »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Kermit 95 3.0 beta
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2025, 02:11:44 pm »
Thanks for the effort Davidrg.
I'm posting the news at OS2World.


Regards
« Last Edit: January 28, 2025, 02:14:51 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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j

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Re: Kermit 95 3.0 beta
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2025, 07:47:11 pm »
Thanks Davidrg & Martin, I still use Kermit, will make sure to upgrade when 3.0 is out!

davidrg

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Re: Kermit 95 3.0 beta
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2025, 11:11:45 pm »
I should probably add that if you regularly use the old commercial release of Kermit 95 (on OS/2 or Windows), or the even older freely available OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(191), it would be very useful to hear any reports of success or otherwise with the new open source Kermit 95. Github can tell me download counts, but of course that doesn't mean people are using it successfully. I'm primarily a Windows user, so if there are any bugs specific to the OS/2 version I'm not too likely to run into them, plus I'm only able to test it against the limited selection of things I have licenses for - OS/2 2.x, warp 3 (non-connect), warp 4 advanced server, and warp 4 with the network options that come in the box (if any) and whatever fix packs were freely available.

Stability-wise, I don't know of any bugs that affect the OS/2 version besides the dialer being broken due to the switch to Open Watcom, though a handful of bugs that affected K95 2.x have been fixed (eg, support for making NetBIOS connections had apparently been broken starting with v1.1.19 of February 2000). If no bugs are reported, the stable release for OS/2 will probably end up looking much like this beta, just with (I hope) a fixed dialer and perhaps support for xterms alternate screen buffer.

On Windows, the current beta releases are at this point more usable than the last commercial release. I'm mostly just using the beta tag now because its not yet feature-complete compared to K95 2.1.3 (though its also not far off it now and most of what's left is probably not widely used). Otherwise, it is more compatible with modern Windows and SSH servers and fixes a number of annoying bugs.