On 4/16/14 3:42 AM, Bálint Réczey wrote: > Hi, > > Many of you probably know about the Wireshark package [1] in Debian > which I started maintaining a few years ago. Like every other package > in Debian, the version of Wireshark included in the major distribution > release is getting security and stability updates through the lifetime > [2] of the major distribution release which is typically 3 years, but > it is still shorter than the lifetime of an Ubuntu LTS (5 years) or > Red Hat [3] (10 years). > > Wireshark, the Project, makes a major release every year and according > our current policy we support [4] the current and previous release > which makes Wireshark releases lifetime 2 years. > > Wireshark makes point releases after each major release fixing bugs > adding minor features and improvements, but only the security and some > stability related fixes get included in updates to the Debian package. > Since the Debian packages have longer lifetime than Wireshark release > I back-port security related fixes to older releases than the project > which means that I already maintain two Wireshark branches with > security fixes only in the form of patch sets [5]. Other distribution > maintainers do the same. > > Since we moved to Git maintaining the branches became easier and I > would like to as the project to allow me to maintain the two existing > branches in the projects repository. Going forward I would like to > open one similar branch for at least every Debian major release and > maintain at least through the major release's lifetime. > > I think it would not create any significant additional work for the > community but it would provide many advantages. > > 1. We could provide an upgrade path for people focused only on > security but not on other improvements keeping the existing release > plan. > 2. Distribution maintainers could eliminate the duplicate work by > collaborating in the LTS branches. > 3. Back-ported fixes could get better testing using the existing > buildbot infrastructure. > 4. Back-ported fixes could be reviewed by more people. > > One additional note regarding Debian, we (at Debian) are thinking > about extending the lifespan of each release to 5 years [7] and this > would extend my commitment to maintaining the Wireshark LTS branches > naturally. > > Would the Project be open for the proposed branches?
Overall it sounds fine to me. How many branches would be created and how would they be named? ___________________________________________________________________________ Sent via: Wireshark-dev mailing list <[email protected]> Archives: http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
