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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] [Wireshark-announce] Wireshark 1.12.0rc3 is now available

From: Bálint Réczey <balint@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 10:18:22 +0200
2014-07-31 0:18 GMT+02:00 Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> On Jul 30, 2014, at 2:35 PM, Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> "git-export-release.sh" is missing:
>>  - ./configure, install-sh, other Autotoolery
>>  - Files generated using Bison/Flex
>>  - help/faq.txt
>>  - packaging/macosx/Info.plist
>>  - plugins/*/plugin.c
>>  - ui/*/*shark-tap-register.c
>
> Can that be rewritten as:
>
>         "git-export-release.sh" is missing:
>          - Everything not checked into Git
>
> This means its output is unacceptable for a release tarball (one purpose of which is to allow people running on a platform for which there's no binary Wireshark distribution to build a given release of Wireshark from source with as few extra tools installed as possible, so it should include a number of things built *from* source checked into Git).
IMO the time when projects were expected to ship configure, etc. is
over. Just look at GitHub, the release tarballs are simple git
snapshots.

Since the files stored in git are enough for building Wireshark on
every platform we support, the additional files we pre-generate for
current release tarball are simply obsolete.
People working on exotic platforms should be able to set up a
development environment for compiling Wireshark if they chose that
exotic platform.

IMO we are working hard on solving a problem which does not exist or
is easily solvable by others having the platform specific knowledge.

Cheers,
Balint

PS: Since in Debian the policy is removing generated files before the
build I will base the official Debian packages on git snapshots until
we switch to releasing them.