Re: Question about dissector "enhancement" / bug

["Maynard, Chris" <Christopher.Maynard () IGT com>]

You can find the download link by navigating from https://www.wireshark.org/ -> Download -> More downloads and 
documentation can be found on the downloads page<https://www.wireshark.org/download.html> -> Live on the Bleeding Edge: 
You can download source code packages and Windows installers which are automatically created each time code is checked 
into the source code repository.  These packages are available in the automated build 
section<https://www.wireshark.org/download/automated/> of our download area.

- Chris


From: Wireshark-dev [mailto:wireshark-dev-bounces () wireshark org] On Behalf Of Jason Cohen
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2019 9:36 AM
To: Developer support list for Wireshark <wireshark-dev () wireshark org>
Subject: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Question about dissector "enhancement" / bug

> > See the automated build section, dev builds for Windows and OSX: https://www.wireshark.org/download/automated/.

> > These builds are produced when a merge is made to the appropriate master branch.

The point wasn't for me.  ;) it was for the thousands+ of users that depend on wireshark to decode captures that will 
never see a line of source code or a build bot in their life, let alone know to find build bot artifacts, or that such 
a thing exists.

On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 7:55 AM Graham Bloice <graham.bloice () trihedral com<mailto:graham.bloice () trihedral com>> 
wrote:


On Fri, 28 Jun 2019 at 13:49, Jason Cohen <kryojenik2 () gmail com<mailto:kryojenik2 () gmail com>> wrote:
All fair points.  I won't push any further.

> > My pulled from the air guess is the set of users that need these incremental dissector\protocol changes is much 
> > smaller than the entire set of users, and their needs are served by the development branch.

Yes, the set of users is much smaller than the entire set of users, but not insignificant.  However, the primary path 
they follow for support of the F5ethtrailer dissector is F5, not Wireshark.org.

And development branch?  By this are you meaning to pull from source and build?  This definitely seems to be a smaller 
sub-set of users.  The website doesn't make it appear that there is even a development branch to be had.  The downloads 
area states:

The current stable release of Wireshark is 3.0.2. It supersedes all previous releases. You can also download the latest 
development release (3.0.0rc2) [which was built 22 Feb, 2019 if you go searching for it] and documentation.

If there was actually a development release to be had that was accessible to the non-compiling public it may be less of 
a pain point.


See the automated build section, dev builds for Windows and OSX: https://www.wireshark.org/download/automated/.

These builds are produced when a merge is made to the appropriate master branch.

Regards,
Jason


On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 4:21 AM Graham Bloice <graham.bloice () trihedral com<mailto:graham.bloice () trihedral com>> 
wrote:


On Fri, 28 Jun 2019 at 06:50, Pascal Quantin <pascal () wireshark org<mailto:pascal () wireshark org>> wrote:
Hi,
Le ven. 28 juin 2019 à 06:06, Anders Broman <a.broman58 () gmail com<mailto:a.broman58 () gmail com>> a écrit :

Den fre 28 juni 2019 00:44Jason Cohen <kryojenik2 () gmail com<mailto:kryojenik2 () gmail com>> skrev:
The question about about weather or not adding dissection of additional information in a dissector is an enhancement or 
a bug; I think this is kind of a grey area.  If a dissector doesn't completely dissect a header, would a patch that 
completes it be considered fixing it?  Does it switch between a fix and enhancement if the reason the field is missing 
is either a wrong offset, or a missing proto_tree_add_item statement?

How about handling vendor specific decodes?  Particularly where the vendor formerly provided a plugin (under an open 
source license) and kept it up to date as formats and data changed.  When Wireshark.org opted to pull a version of it 
into libwireshark (which is a good idea) negatively impacts the release of updates.  Wireshark is not beholden to a 
vendors release cycle and a vendor isn't beholden to Wiresharks.  But when they do not coincide, functionality that 
would readily be available is now blocked and delayed.  Furthermore, with the inclusion of the now incomplete dissector 
it makes it unmanageable to provide the full vendor functionality as a plugin.

I think there should be some level of flexibility to the inclusion of dissector updates under these circumstances.

As a specific example I am referring to:
https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15876

Jason

It's a slippery slope either way. One can also argue that using the development version is a possibility. At one point 
Ubuntu was not taking our minor versions but rader did their own with security fixes only. So there's different views 
on the subject.

 I'm not opposed to make an exception in this case however as the change is small. What does other people think?

Personally I consider adding new fields / new versions of a protocol as being an enhancement (that's what I do for the 
dissectors I maintain). If we do an exception here, how will we handle the next request and justify if we refuse the 
backport? We might open a can of worms here.
The development builds are most of the time stable enough for a day to day use.

Just my 2 cents,
Pascal.

I think the aim of the policy is to keep the "stable" release as stable as possible, we all know that collateral damage 
from making a change is possible and the policy aims to reduce this.  I have quibbled in the past with changes being 
back-ported that seem to me to be enhancements for this reason.

My pulled from the air guess is the set of users that need these incremental dissector\protocol changes is much smaller 
than the entire set of users, and their needs are served by the development branch.

As noted by Pascal, the development branch is (usually) quite stable and it's been my daily driver for a number of 
years.

--
Graham Bloice

--
Graham Bloice











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