Development/LifeCycle

Release Life Cycle

The Wireshark download page lists three types of releases: Stable, Old Stable, and Development.

The Stable and Old Stable release lifetimes conform to the following guidelines:

Depending on the pacing of major releases and their lifetimes we might have an "Old Old Stable" branch in addition to the Stable and Old Stable ones.

See End of Support planning for support life cycle information specific to each release.

A more detailed description can be found in the Release Policy.

Staying Current

Wireshark releases are announced on the wireshark-announce mailing list. A PAD file is also published at https://www.wireshark.org/wireshark-pad.xml.

Release Numbers

To understand the numbering of the releases, see the explanation of release numbers.

Release Planning

For the planning of the upcoming releases and their proposed contents see the roadmap.

Past Releases

Release Notes for each release are available on the main site.
Version Info (build components) for past Windows releases.

The git change log provides good information about changes in each release:

Changes for older releases are listed in wiki pages:

End of Support planning

Each major release is supported for a minimum of 18 months. Specific notes for each release can be found below.

Version Stable Release Date End of Support Notes
4.2 November 15, 2023 Release + 18 or more months Support ends when 4.6.0 is released. Last release to support Windows 10. Last release to support macOS 10.14.
4.0 October 4, 2022 Release + 18 or more months Last release to support Windows 8.1. Support ends when 4.4.0 is released.
3.6 November 22, 2021 May 22, 2024 Long term support (LTS). Last release to support 32-bit Windows. Last release to support macOS 10.13. Last release to support Red Hat EL 7. Last release to support SUSE Linux ES 12. Last release to support Ubuntu Bionic (18.04LTS)
3.4 October 29, 2020 September 7, 2022 Last release to support macOS 10.12.
3.2 December 18, 2019 November 22, 2021 Last release to support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
3.0 February 28, 2019 October 29, 2020
2.6 April 18, 2018 October 18, 2020 Long term support (LTS). Last release to support GTK+ and Qt4. Last release to support Red Hat EL 6. Last release to support Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 and OS X 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11.
2.4 July 19, 2017 July 19, 2019 GTK+ UI disabled by default.
2.2 September 7, 2016 September 7, 2018 Last release to support Windows Vista and (the non-R2) Windows Server 2008.
2.0 November 18, 2015 November 18, 2017 Last release to support OS X on 32-bit x86.
1.12 July 31, 2014 July 31, 2016 Last release using the GTK+ GUI by default. Last release to support Windows Server 2003.
1.10 June 5, 2013 June 5, 2015 Last release to support Windows XP and U3 packages.
1.8 June 21, 2012 June 21, 2014 Last release to support Mac OS X on PPC.
1.6 June 7, 2011 June 7, 2013 Last release that compiles on Red Hat EL 5.
1.4 August 30, 2010 August 30, 2012
1.2 June 15, 2009 June 30, 2011 Last release to support Windows 2000.
1.0 March 31, 2008 September 30, 2010 Last release to support GTK+ 1.0.

Discussion

Support for Windows 8.1 ended on January 10, 2023. Wireshark 4.0 is the last release that supports it.

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020. Wireshark 3.2 is the last release that supports it.

Support for Windows Vista ended on April 11, 2017. Wireshark 2.2 is the last release that supports it.

Support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014. Wireshark 1.10 is the last release that supports it.

U3 reached end of life in 2009. We stopped producing U3 packages when 1.10 reached end of life.


Imported from https://wiki.wireshark.org/Development/LifeCycle on 2020-08-11 23:12:53 UTC