Re: Future of Wireshark's shared library ABI stability

[Bálint Réczey <balint () balintreczey hu>]

Hi João,

João Valverde <j () v6e pt> ezt írta (időpont: 2022. jan. 21., P, 1:14):
> On 20/01/22 12:41, Bálint Réczey wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > João shared his opinion about the project's commitment to maintain
> > stable shared library ABI within stable branches:
> > https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822
> >
> > I believe the current practice is reasonable and beneficial enough for
> > many parties to warrant the work, but I could be wrong.
>
> I agree the current practice is reasonable and beneficial, and it is
> currently documented in README.Developer[1], chapter 7.3, to the best of
> my understanding and ability.

OK, great to hear that from you. I got the impression from the gitlab
comments that you had a different view.

> Do you have changes you'd like to propose? I'll gladly go over those.

I'm happy with the the project's commitment to ABI stability and agree
with Gerald's proposal of trying to revive the abi-complicance-checker
test to help him in the final release checks. I may find time to
restore the changes after this discussion is settled.

Since you are asking, I'd very much welcome less hostility from your
side than what I observed in [2] when I reported the ABI breakage.

What triggered my email was that after I reported the ABI breakage you
made in the stable branch you refused to own and fix it [3] and even
after Gerald kindly stepped in with the fix [4] you kept arguing ([5]
[6] ...) and this made me tired and wondering if you really represent
the project's opinion as you seemed to believe.

> What I won't do, however, is maintain your package for you.

I maintain the package in Debian for the users and not particularly
for myself since I'm not using Wireshark in my profession as I used to
do.
In general I'm happy to accept help, but I think I've never asked for
your help specifically for that package and I note that I should not
ask in  the future either.

The Debian packaging in the upstream repository, i.e. [7] serves a
different set of users, those who want to be closer to the latest
development of Wireshark and the packaging scripts are kept a bit
simpler. I intentionally don't make too many changes there to let the
Wireshark project members set the direction and the changes there go
through the regular local review process. I believe the packaging in
itself is useful and the .symbols files help noticing ABI changes.

Cheers,
Balint

[2] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822
[3] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822#note_811782349
[4] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822#note_815667191
[5] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822#note_815684186
[6] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/17822#note_815838497
[7] https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/commits/master/debian
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