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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark ABI stability 1.6.4 -> 1.6.5

From: Balint Reczey <balint.reczey@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 22:39:56 +0100
Hi Gerald,

On 01/09/2012 07:56 PM, Gerald Combs wrote:
On 1/8/12 12:08 PM, Balint Reczey wrote:
Hi,

I have run tools/git-compare-abis.sh on latest master-1.6
(wireshark-1.6.4-21-ga6c3642).

The ABI is almost totally stable [1], which is very good sign for plugin
developers and for anyone using Wireshark's libraries.  :-)

There is only a minor incompatibility in packet-zbee-zcl.h caused by
changed constants, which could be fixed by not backporting r40133.

The ABI change is the result of fixing a bug. If we revert the change
the ZigBee ZCL dissector will revert back to its previous broken
behavior and packet-zbee-zcl.h will have incorrect definitions.
Shouldn't we change the libwireshark version from 2:0:1 to 2:1:0 instead?
I don't know how important the ZigBee change is, but generally bumping the major version of a library is something I would avoid. After releasing 1.8.0 we should definitely avoid it because we will probably bump the major version in 1.8.0 and bumping it in 1.6.x would result a collision.

As a not too nice solution we can release 1.6.4 with a known ABI breakage what is still better than breaking the ABI more like we did in the past.

I would prefer not breaking the ABI and not releasing the ZigBee fix because this would be a clean solution and users can always download the automated builds to get the latest correct dissector.

Generally I would prefer releasing only stability/security/build fixes in the stable branch to minimize the probability of introducing new bugs and incompatibilities.

Cheers,
Balint