I'm trying to apply an old patch on Wireshark. I found these lines (quoted below) in the installation instruction part of the patch. I'm not sure what the difference between Wireshark source releases,buildbot source tarball, source code checked out directly from Subversion? "NOTE: this document applies to the Wireshark source releases and -buildbot source tarballs. It does not apply to source code checked -out directly from Subversion, as files such as the configuration -script are not checked into Subversion, but need to be generated -from the autoconf and automake files. -See http://wiki.wireshark.org/Development if you would like to build -the source code checked out directly from Subversion." Any idea? Thanks. asked 11 Jun '14, 12:11  flora edited 11 Jun '14, 16:43  Guy Harris ♦♦ |
2 Answers:
If you download a "Source Code" release from the Wireshark download page, that's a "Wireshark source release". If you download a ".tar.bz2" file from the If you clone the Wireshark Git repository following the instructions on the developer page, that's "source code checked out directly from Git"; we're no longer using Subversion, we're using Git now. answered 11 Jun '14, 14:32 Guy Harris ♦♦ |
That text is taken directly from Wireshark's own installation instructions in its top-level answered 11 Jun '14, 16:47 Guy Harris ♦♦ Yes this is true.I just compared the patch file and the INSTALL file as you mentioned and I found they are very similar. However, I'm having several errors patching the latest wireshark with that five years old patch and I guess I have no other option except to applying it manually. Are there any resources or links that can assist me while doing this task? (12 Jun '14, 10:46) flora Unfortunately, no; there's no "how to port arbitrarily old Wireshark patches to newer versions of Wireshark" guide out there. (12 Jun '14, 11:18) Guy Harris ♦♦ I wasn't really asking literally about such that guide but thanks for your reply anyway :) Just in case someone comes through this, I found a very relevant link in the wireshark documentation about applying others patches on Wireshark [1]: http://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsdg_html_chunked/ChSrcPatchApply.html (12 Jun '14, 12:46) flora |
Great thanks that answers my question. I'm wondering if you or any one knows what the difference between all of these sources?
Wireshark uses Automake and Autoconf on UN*X platforms, in order to handle differences between different flavors of UN*X and different versions of those different flavors.
The configure script is generated by Autoconf; the source to the configure script is checked into the source code repository (Git, and formerly Subversion, and CVS before that), but the generated scripts are not checked into the repository.
If you check out the source from Git, and are building on UN*X (and aren't using CMake) you will therefore need to generate the configure script etc. using the
autogen.shscript.However, the source tarballs, whether they're releases or automated builds, include the results of
autogen.sh, so that a user would not have to generate the configure script etc. and thus would not need to have Automake, Autoconf, etc. installed on their system.If, however, the patch adds new files to the Wireshark source, you may need to regenerate the configure script even with a source tarball;
autogen.shis included in the source tarball and, if you have Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool installed, you can use theautogen.shscript.The difference between the source code releases and the automated builds is that we have a "buildbot" that, whenever a change to the Wireshark source is checked into the Git repository, checks out the changed source code and builds it, on several different platforms.
On one of the platforms (Ubuntu Linux), one of the steps in the build process is building a source tarball; if that succeeds, the source tarball is made available for downloading from the src subdirectory of the automated build directory, in case somebody wants to test it, or needs a fix in it that's not yet in an official release and are willing to "live on the bleeding edge".
Every so often, Gerald Combs decides that it's time for a new official release. Gerald then makes a "snapshot" of the source repository, which includes the changes that will go into that release, and does a build. The source tarball for that release is made available, as are binary versions for Windows and OS X. An official release is a bit less risky to run than an arbitrary automated build.
Very clear and informative answer. thank you so much!