NmapFE++

Update: This task to make an all-new Nmap frontend to replace NmapFE was completed and the result is Zenmap, the new official Nmap GUI and results browser.

The goal for this project idea is to make a new, much improved Nmap GUI which is useful for executing Nmap, and results viewing. This is to be done as part of the Google Summer of Code project (see the Nmap GoogleGrants page). Doing this in 10 weeks will be a huge challenge, but should be a great learning experience. We will also probably sponsor 2 or 3 developers to work on independent GUIs (Google doesn't allow teams to work together). At the project end (Sept. 1), perhaps the best features of each could be combined. Or maybe one will be vastly superior to the others and can be used as the default Nmap GUI. Or, maybe they will both be useful to different sets of people, serving different niches. The development will be done in the open on a site such as Sourceforge, and nmap-dev people are allowed (and encouraged) to help them test, contribute patches, etc. A new GUI would be a great boost to the project. This GUI will do a lot more than simply execute Nmap and show the unparsed results in a Window -- that only helps newbies. Read the specs below and you'll see a lot of features designed for advanced users scanning huge networks. Probably 80% of work will be in the results viewer/parser, making the "nmap execution" part relatively easy.

I do want to emphasize that this is NOT intended as a replacement for the beloved command-line version of Nmap. So no need to get defensive about it, as some recent nmap-dev mails were :). Heck, the app will work by executing the command-line version. Even if the app turns out to be everything I want it to be, I'll still use the command-line version for most of my scanning. But it is nice that other people have the option to use the GUI for executing Nmap. And the results viewer aspect (which, again, is most of the work), could be very useful even for the command line gearheads.

If you guys think of other important features/requirements for this document, of feel it should be changed in other ways, let me know. Labels such as "should" or "would be nice" denote less-critical features that can be worked on last, while "musts" have to be met. Here are the proposed features and infrastructure requirements for the new Nmap GUI and results viewer:

Note that even the "required" features are negotiable. Let me know if you can't do some of these.We may have to do some triage to determine the most important bits, while leaving the design open enough that the other features could be added later.

REQUIRED FEATURES

INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS