Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches

[Jaap Keuter <jaap.keuter () xs4all nl>]

On 01/18/2013 08:05 PM, Evan Huus wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Bálint Réczey <balint () balintreczey hu> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I think we did a very good job in maintaining backward compatibility
> > in  1.6.x and 1.8.x releases [1].
> >
> > In  >1.6.1 there were no backward incompatible change in the 1.6.x
> > branch and on 1.8.x branch there were only one [2].
> > It is caused by a fix [3] for bug 7348 [4].
> >
> > IMHO while fixing the bug was clearly useful we could consider
> > reverting the fix on 1.8.x it to return to the original ABI in 1.8.5.
> >
> > What do you, developers think? What policy should we follow in case of
> > accidental ABI breakages?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Balint
> >
> > [1] http://upstream-tracker.org/versions/wireshark.html
> > [2] http://upstream-tracker.org/compat_reports/wireshark/1.8.2_to_1.8.3/abi_compat_report.html
> > [3] http://code.wireshark.org/git/?p=wireshark;a=commit;h=e5e09f70168e7534a91959255e558c8a5cd9991a
> > [4] https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7348

> In this particular case the bug is so minor that I have no problem
> with reverting it (I personally wouldn't have bothered back-porting it
> in the first place).
>
> In the general case I think we should try to avoid ABI breakage where
> possible, but not at the cost of crashers or security bugs. The very
> first google hit for many variants of 'libwireshark' or 'using
> libwireshark' is [1] which explains how it's not really usable in
> 3rd-party programs anyways.
>
> Tangentially, it would be nice if it were usable as a proper library
> in 3rd-party programs, but that's a lot of work somebody would have to
> do to get it in shape.
>
> Cheers,
> Evan
>
> [1] 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10308127/using-libwireshark-to-get-wireshark-functionality-programatically/10355701#10355701


Well, the whole exercise to get the dissection engine nicely packed into a lib
was (partly) because of returning questions about a 'stable' engine lib.
So we either do it properly or not at all. This bug falls into the category
'nice to have' so should not lead to API/ABI breakage.

Just my ¤0.02,
Jaap


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