Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Subversion Repository Layout, or, How to Confuse People

From: Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:18:19 -0400

Bryant Eastham wrote:
All-

This is going to sound more harsh than I mean it to. I appreciate that people have differing opinions on this subject.

To the core developers: please use Subversion in a more standard way.

Yes, Subversion can be used in many different ways. However, just because it can doesn�t mean that it should, and to those of us who try to use your repository (at least from my point of view) what you have done is extremely confusing.

Let me just walk you through my experience today. Wireshark 1.2.0 is now released, and I must build my plugins based on it for internal distribution. To do this I need to download the source code corresponding to the build, both Windows and Linux. I need to determine what to check out.

I think Gerald generally creates the /releases stuff a few days after the release. That may be more delayed than usual because of Sharkfest.

But one fundamental question I have is: why use SVN to get the source of an official release in the first place? I do that for latest-SVN builds (when things are constantly changing) but for the official releases I grab the tarball. It downloads faster (bzip2 :-)) and if I think I messed something up I just "rm -rf" and untar it again.