tcpdump mailing list archives
Removing untested libpcap support for older platforms
From: Guy Harris <gharris () sonic net>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2023 20:27:41 -0700
The MS-DOS support in libpcap was recently removed in the main branch; the comment for the pull request is "MSDOS packet driver interface is no longer testable", and the comment for the first commit is "MSDOS packet driver interface is no longer testable, anyone needs it can use a previous version". We've also removed support for older versions of the Linux kernel in recent releases. We now also require C99 support by the compiler and library. Should we also consider removing support for some older UN*X platforms, such as: SunOS prior to SunOS 4 - pcap-nit.c; the last such version, SunOS 3.5, was released in January 1988 SunOS 4.x - pcap-snit.c; the last such version, SunOS 4.1.5, was released in November 1994 HP-UX 9 - some code in pcap-dlpi.c; the last such version, 9.10, was released in early-to-mid 1995 HP-UX 10 prior to 10.20 - some code in pcap-dlpi.c; - the only such version, 10.0, was released in 1995 SINIX - some code in pcap-dlpi.c; - the last release, Reliant UNIX 5.45, was released some time in the early 2000s (?) IRIX - pcap-snoop.c; - the last update was released some time in the mid-to-late 2000s (?) DEC OSF/1^W^WDigital UNIX^WTru64 UNIX - pcap-pf.c; the last release, Tru64 UNIX 5.1B-6, was released in October 2010 (release information from that famously reliable site, Wikipedia: https://www.theonion.com/wikipedia-celebrates-750-years-of-american-independence-1819568571 and some Google searching). We don't have any buildbots doing tests of those platforms, and I don't know when the last test of whether libpcap will compile or work on those platforms was done. However, there may well be people using them - pull request #1203: https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/libpcap/pull/1203 was a change to fix libpcap so that it builds on Mac OS X 10.4, the last version of which, 10.5.8, was released on August 13, 2009. So the questions are: 1) Which of these have a significant user base? 2) Which of them have a user base willing to provide a buildbot so that we check for code rot? (Note that users in group 1) but not in group 2) are at risk of code rot either rendering libpcap unbuildable or making the result of the compile not work correctly.) _______________________________________________ tcpdump-workers mailing list -- tcpdump-workers () lists tcpdump org To unsubscribe send an email to tcpdump-workers-leave () lists tcpdump org %(web_page_url)slistinfo%(cgiext)s/%(_internal_name)s
Current thread:
- Removing untested libpcap support for older platforms Guy Harris (Oct 05)
- Re: Removing untested libpcap support for older platforms Michael Richardson (Oct 06)