Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] misleading description on Wireshark Download page

[Chris Maynard <Chris.Maynard@xxxxxxxxx>]

Balint Reczey <balint.reczey@...> writes:

> We already provide automated development builds at
> ftp://ftp.wireshark.org/automated/ .
> I think those are enough. Distributions are also free to package svn snapshots.

That's true, but those automated builds aren't announced on the wireshark-
mailing list(s) when they're made, nor do they appear center-stage on
http://www.wireshark.org/ with the other other stable releases, so I suspect
that there are a lot of users out there that aren't even aware of them.

The other thing about the development release is that it's sort of an indication
from the development team that, "yeah, this is a development release and you
might encounter some problems with it, but we believe it's at least in
reasonable enough shape that you should find it useful for most purposes". 
Contrast that with automated releases which could contain features in just about
any state of development.  Unless you're following along closely to
wireshark-dev, wireshark-bugs, etc., you probably don't have a good sense of
which automated release is likely OK to use and which you should probably avoid.

Well, I don't have any particularly strong opinion on this matter either way,
but I'm just presenting some counter-arguments as food for thought.

- Chris