Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Notes from Sharkfest '13

From: Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:17:29 -0700
The following subjects came up during developer discussions at Sharkfest
this year:

Sub-PDUs (aka aggregated PDUs). In many cases protocol data and frame
boundaries don't match, particularly when a single frame carries
multiple protocols. Should we turn the packet list be a tree? If so,
what should frame numbers look like?

Git (cue ominous music). I managed to install SubGit (a bidirectional
Git ↔ SVN gateway) a few months ago. It seems very nice but I wasn't
crazy about the idea of managing our current repository count times two.
I think we should just switch over to Git in the near term but I'd like
to hear everyone's opinion on this. If you would be severly impacted by
moving to Git please respond to the list or let me know privately.
Otherwise I'll start planning the switch for later this summer.

Moving to Github. Assuming we switch to Git it would be possible to host
the official repository at Github.

Advantates:
  - I'm not sure that an in-house equivalent (e.g. Gerrit plus a
    private repository) would be better than what Github offers.
  - It would be less for me to worry about / manage.

Disadvantages:
  - This would mean transitioning to an different workflow.

Qt. We need to coordinate work (e.g. so that we don't inadvertently
interfere with Thomas' GSoC effort). It would be helpful if autofoo
supported both GTK+ and Qt builds (I think Jeff is looking into this).
We should probably evaluate the status of the port in December or
January in order to figure out the timing of the next release.

C++. It snuck in with Qt. Should we allow C++ in the rest of the code or
at least use C++ compilation everywhere?

Fileshark. (Evan discussed in detail in a separate email)

Sharkfest Europe. I think everyone is for it in general, but it's a
matter of getting it organized. Even if we don't have an official
Sharkfest event I think another EU developer meeting at some point would
be useful.