0.9.0

[GhostofGoes]

Announcement: Compatibility with Python versions older than 3.6 (2.7, 3.4, and 3.5) is deprecated and will be removed in getmac 1.0.0. If you are stuck on an unsupported Python, consider loosely pinning the version of this package in your dependency list, e.g. getmac<1.0.0 or getmac~=0.9.0.

This release is a complete rewrite of getmac from the ground up.

Refer to docs/rewrite.md for a in-depth explanation of the rewrite changes.

The new system has a number of benefits

• Reduction of false-positives and false-negatives by improving method selection accuracy (platform, validity, etc.)
• Significantly faster overall
• "Misses" have the same performance as "Hits"
• Easier to test, since each method can be tested directly via it's class
• Eaiser to type annotate and analyze with mypy
• Easier to read, improving reviewability and ease of contributing for newcomers
• Extensible! Custom methods can be defined and added at runtime (which is perfect if you have some particular edge case but aren't able to open-source it).

Added

• Fully support Python 3.9 (automated tests in CI)
• Tentatively support Python 3.10 and 3.11 (unable to test due to the need to be able to still test 2.7)
• Added default interface detection for MacOS (command: route get default)
• Added initial support for Solaris/SunOS. There were a few existing methods that worked as-is, so just added indicators that those methods support sunos (Which applies to any system where platform.system() == SunOS).
• arping (POSIX) or SendARP (Windows) will now always be used instead of sending a UDP packet when looking for the MAC of a IPv4 host, if they're available and operable (otherwise, UDP + ARP table check will be used like before).
• The amount of time taken to get a result (in seconds) will now be recorded and logged if debugging is enabled (DEBUG>=1 or -d)
• Added command line argument to override the UDP port for network requests: --override-port (this was already possible in Python via getmac.getmac.PORT, but wasn't configurable via the CLI. Now it is!).
• Added ability to override the detected platform via --override-platform argument (CLI) or getmac.getmac.OVERRIDE_PLATFORM variable (Python). This will force methods for that platform to be used, regardless of the actual platform. Here's an example forcing linux to be used as the platform: getmac -i eth0 --override-platform linux. In version 1.0.0, this feature will added as an argument to get_mac_address().
• Added ability to force a specific method to be used via --force-method argument (CLI) or getmac.getmac.FORCE_METHOD variable (Python). This is useful for troubleshotting issues, general debugging, and testing changes. Example: getmac -v -dddd --ip 192.168.0.1 --force-method ctypeshost

Changed

• Complete rewrite of getmac from the ground up. Refer to docs/rewrite.md for a in-depth explanation of the rewrite changes
• Fixed a failure to look up a hostname now returns None, as expected, instead of raising an exception (socket.gaierror).
• Fixed numerous false-negative and false-positive bugs
• Improved overall performance
• Performance for cases where no MAC is found is now the same as cases where a MAC is found (speed of "misses" now equals that of "hits")
• Improved the reliability and performance of many methods
• Fixed netstat on older Linux distros (such as Ubuntu 12.04)
• Overhauled ifconfig parsing. It should now be far more reliable and accurate across all platforms.
• Improved Android support. Note that newer devices are locked down and the amount of information that's obtainable by an unprivileged process is quite limited (Android 7/9 and newer, not sure exactly when they changed this, I'm not an Android guy). That being said, the normal Linux methods should work fine, provided you have the proper permissions (usually, root).
• Fixed bug with /proc/net/route parsing (this affected Android and potentially other platforms)
• Improve default interface detection for FreeBSD (command: route get default)

Removed

• Removed man pages from distribution (getmac.1/getmac2.1). They were severely out of date and unused. May re-add at a later date.

Dev

• Migrate CI to GitHub Actions, remove TravisCI and Appveyor
• Add flake8 plugins: flake8-pytest-style and flake8-annotations
• Add additional samples and tests for WSL1 (with the Ubuntu 18.04 distro)
• Add additional samples for Windows 10
• Add additional samples for MacOS
• Add samples and tests for Ubuntu 12.04
• Add samples for NetBSD 8 (support coming in a future release)
• Add samples for Solaris 10 (support TBD)
• Add samples for several versions of Android
• Add new tests
• Improve existing tests
• Consolidate everything related to RPM packaging to packaging/rpm/. This stuff hasn't been updated since 0.6.0, may remove in the future and leave distro packaging to distro maintainers.

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This discussion was created from the release 0.9.0.