Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Release early, release often? - What about a new release?
Hi List!
The current release situation is unsatisfying IMHO.
The last official release is the Ethereal 0.99.0 version from April 24,
2006 which is about 10 weeks ago and contains some frequently reported
(and quite annoying) bugs in the win32 export functions (and obviously
elsewhere).
The official note of the Wireshark switch was at Jun 7, 2006, more than
a month ago.
But we still don't have an official Wireshark release!!!
There are some known bugs (e.g. the list from Ilja van Sprundel) that
would be nice to be fixed before the next release, of course.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to have the time or motivation to fix them
(including myself) :-(
However, the reported bugs are certainly in the 0.99.0 release as well,
so every user will be vulnerable to them right now, if we release a new
version or not.
Releasing a new version would:
- don't confuse our users with the current situation!!! (try to explain
this to someone else and you know what I mean)
- make the new name better known
- release the fixes we've already done (so we won't get repeated bug
reports at least for them)
So what are we waiting for?
Waiting for all bugs to be fixed before a new release might not be the
right thing to do, as it postpones the release for fixes we've already
done and there are a lot of them since the last official release.
The saying "release early, release often" has it's reasons. Getting back
to a release cycle of about 4-6 weeks (which we've done some time ago)
seems to work better IMO.
Regards, ULFL
P.S: If the effort to release a new version is too high, then the
release process should be simplified or automated (I guess that Gerald
is still a bit busy from moving) ;-)
P.P.S: One of the reasons I'm complaining is: I'm currently postpone the
committing of some substantial changes to the DCOM dissector for some
weeks now, as I thought we would get a new release shortly. I've
postponed them as they will certainly introduce new bugs. Hmmm, now I
don't have a good backup concept for these changes and setting up my own
subversion server to keep these changes will probably end up in my own
private Wireshark fork (which I really don't like to have).
