Wireshark mailing list archives
Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability
From: Bálint Réczey <balint () balintreczey hu>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2022 10:44:10 +0100
João Valverde <j () v6e pt> ezt írta (időpont: 2022. jan. 21., P, 1:29):
On 20/01/22 21:24, Bálint Réczey wrote:Hi Guy, Guy Harris <gharris () sonic net> ezt írta (időpont: 2022. jan. 20., Cs, 21:52):On Jan 20, 2022, at 12:34 PM, Gerald Combs <gerald () wireshark org> wrote:Q: Should *wsutil* be part of that stable ABI? Debian, Ubuntu and (according to rpmfind.net) OpenSuSE and Mageia treat it as such. It would be helpful to know what non-Wireshark packages depend on wsutil in those distributions and elsewhere....and, if there are any, to know *why*.It seems libvirt's plugin needs wmem_alloc(), for example: https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17889How is that relevant? The answer to the question that was asked is: exactly zero Debian packages have a dependency on your libwsutil/libwireshark/libwiretap packages.
In gitlab issue I already mention libvirt as a packaged thus I had the impression that this one was covered: https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822#note_815677078 It is factually incorrect to state that nothing depends on our libraries in Debian: root@73c5830ef791:/# apt-cache rdepends libwireshark14 libwireshark14 Reverse Depends: ... libvirt-wireshark root@73c5830ef791:/# cat /etc/issue Debian GNU/Linux 11 \n \l root@b396a73800b0:/# apt-cache rdepends libwireshark15 libwireshark15 Reverse Depends: ... libvirt-wireshark root@b396a73800b0:/# cat /etc/issue Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid \n \l # apt-cache show libvirt-wireshark Package: libvirt-wireshark Source: libvirt ... Description: Wireshark dissector for the libvirt protocol I'm not sure how you checked, but this is what I saw on current stable and sid.
If you want to see what a properly packaged non-trivial application for Debian looks like check out Geany[1] for example. It also uses shared libraries internally and has a plugin system.
Generally I'm open to learn new things, but after not being able to find reverse dependencies of libwireshark* I hope you don't mind that I take your advice on packaging with a grain of salt. From Geany's description: About ----- Geany is a small and lightweight integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. Another goal was to be as independent as possible from a special Desktop Environment like KDE or GNOME. So it is using only the GTK+ toolkit and therefore you need only the GTK+ runtime libraries to run Geany. As you can see Geany's goals are very different from Wireshark's and Geany not providing shared libraries aligns with having minimal dependencies. Speaking of packaging non-trivial applications I maintained systemd and glibc among other things in Ubuntu in the last few years thus I have some experience in the area.
IMO it is easier mentally to have a single library ABI policy because we ship only public libraries. Having a more relaxed private shared library policy would make it easier to make mistakes.I have no idea what you are trying to say here. The libraries were not intended to be public until you stepped in, by the way.
I'm wondering if others did understand what I tried to say here. As you pointed out in [2] there were recurring queries to make the then private libraries more widely available and I accept the credit or blame to help a lot in making the ABI stable and available for external projects.
Also if libwsutil (with wmem_alloc) became private in 3.6.x then libvirt had a much harder time continuing the maintenance of their plugin starting with 3.6.0.No. Nobody said anything about 3.6.x and none of that is true.
This was a hypothetical example of what would happen if we moved libwsutil to a private library location with no ABI stability promise. And wmem_alloc did move to libwsutil in [3]. Thanks, Balint
[1] https://salsa.debian.org/geany-team/geany
[2] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822#note_815838497 [3] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/commit/7f9c1f5f92c131354fc8b2b88d473706786064c0 ___________________________________________________________________________ Sent via: Wireshark-dev mailing list <wireshark-dev () wireshark org> Archives: https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev Unsubscribe: https://www.wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev mailto:wireshark-dev-request () wireshark org?subject=unsubscribe
Current thread:
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability, (continued)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Gerald Combs (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Guy Harris (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Guy Harris (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability João Valverde (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Bálint Réczey (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability João Valverde (Jan 20)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Bálint Réczey (Jan 21)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability João Valverde (Jan 21)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability João Valverde (Jan 22)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 22)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Bálint Réczey (Jan 21)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability João Valverde (Jan 21)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Roland Knall (Jan 21)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability Bálint Réczey (Jan 21)
- Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability João Valverde (Jan 21)