Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] Creating a stable branch

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From: Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 16:16:02 -0600
The next big step in improving Ethereal's security is to branch off a
stable release.

Ethereal changes quite a bit over time.  The
"patch-ethereal-x-to-y.diff.bz2" files that accompany each release
typically exceed 200,000 lines.  For some perspective, this is more
lines of "diff -u" than Apache has lines of code (~ 130,000).

A side effect of this high rate of change is the introduction of bugs
(some of them security-related).  While a release might fix several
vulnerabilities, it will typically introduce several more.

Once the Coverity defect count goes to zero I plan on creating a stable
branch, which shall only receive bug fixes.  I'd like to call it "0.99"
and use it to create a "1.0" branch some time in the future, like so:

                                     1.0---
                                     /
            0.99.0   0.99.1   0.99.x----          1.1or2.0
              /        /        /                    /
0.10.14   0.99-------------------    ?.0   ?.1   ?.x--
  /        /                          /     /     /
-------------------------------------------------------> Trunk

Why 0.99/1.0?  Whether we like it or not, people have been treating
Ethereal as if it's "1.0" and have been using it in production
environments for a very long time.  Calling it "alpha" or "beta" quality
with version numbers like  0.10.8 defies reality.

I'm not sure what to call any unstable releases that come from the trunk
_after_ the 0.99 branch, however.