Roadmap

This is a tentative roadmap for the next stable releases of Wireshark. For more information on the Wireshark release lifecycle and on past releases see Development/LifeCycle.

Planning

• Release	Expected Date	Notes
  2.6.3	August 29, 2018	Next maintenance release of the 2.6 branch
  2.4.9	August 29, 2018	Next maintenance release of the 2.4 branch
  2.2.17	August 29, 2018	Next maintenance release of the 2.2 branch

Backporting Changes

Significant bug fixes should be backported to each applicable stable branches after they are checked in to the master branch. You can follow development progress using the links below.

• Recent changes in the master (development) branch

  Recent changes in the 2.6 branch

  Recent changes in the 2.4 branch

  Recent changes in the 2.2 branch

Proposed Changes

For a list of bugs that should have been fixed before the 2.0 release, see Bugzilla (target milestone: 2.0 release).

Other proposed items (possibly out of date, see wiki source):

• Items marked with in the TODO list of Development/SNMP since rev148 2007-08-30

• Keep plugin API and ABI stable and versioned, so binary plugins will reliably work with more than one Wireshark version (ABI changes can be followed here: https://abi-laboratory.pro/tracker/timeline/wireshark/) since rev2033 2011-10-30

  • Run tools/git-compare-abis.sh in the Git repository right before the release since rev2033 2011-10-30

  • Bump library versions as needed based on Libtool's documentation in */Makefile.am and */CmakeList.txt (don't forget updating debian/*.symbols) since rev2033 2011-10-30 for autotools, rev3305 2014-05-30 for cmake

  • When major library version bumps are needed *.CMakeList.txt-s have to be changed at two locations and debian/lib*N.* files have to be updated and renamed

• Include Lua API changes in release notes (Lua dissectors can detect Wireshark version using get_version() and adjust the API used.)

• Add privilege separation for dissection since rev10 2006-03-27

• Add thread/multiprocessor support since rev12 2006-04-06

... well, maybe all the points mentioned in the WishList!

Unsorted

• Security improvements (see also: Security)

  • Add privilege separation for POSIX environments (in progress) since rev8 2005-12-12

  • Add a similar mechanism for the Windows environment since forever rev1 2004-10-15

  • Enhance the API to make it easier to write secure code (e.g. add tvb_get_gstring())? since forever rev1 2004-10-15

• Documentation of library API's (e.g. wiretap) since forever rev1 2004-10-15

Discussion