Mibble Version Information

Version 2.5 (2004-10-26):

• Added SNMPv2c & SNMPv3 to the MIB browser
  The MIB browser application has been updated in a variety of ways, adding support for SNMPv2c & SNMPv3, command-line MIB loading and improved tree walking. The graphical interface has also been totally reworked so it should now both look better and provide more visual feedback. The browser is now also available in the commercial version. Bug #10732 & Bug #10748
• Added support for multiple MIB modules in a single file
  The library now supports loading multiple MIB modules from a single file, as required per the ASN.1 standard. It is still strongly recommended to place each MIB module in its own file however. Thanks to Frank Fock for reporting this. Bug #10261
• Added new base class for SNMP macro types
  Added a new SnmpType class as a new base class for all the SNMP macro types. So far the API it provides is rather minimal, but it makes it easier to distinguish between ASN.1 types and SNMP macro types. Thanks to Thomas Åhlén for suggesting this. Bug #10731
• Added new convenience methods to some classes
  The MibValueSymbol, ObjectIdentifierValue and SnmpAccess classes in the Mibble API have been improved by the addition of new methods. This will facilitate some searches or tests that could previously be a bit cumbersome to write. Bug #10634
• Added OID tree printing to MibblePrinter
  The MibblePrinter test application has been extended to allow several input files and now also contains an option to print the complete OID tree. Thanks to Thomas Åhlén for the original idea. Bug #10651
• Changed semantics of getDescription() method
  The getDescription() method has been changed to return a cleaner version of the description text. All unneeded indentation is removed and tab characters are now replaced with spaces. The old semantics is available from the new getUnformattedDescription() method. Bug #10790
• Changed the location of the bundled MIB files
  The MIB files bundled with Mibble have been moved to a separate JAR-file. This makes it easier to replace, update or remove them without modifying other parts of Mibble. As a result of this, the parser JAR-file has also been renamed. Bug #10648
• Changed the bundled MIB file content
  The MIB files bundled with Mibble have been updated. Many new IANA and IETF MIB files have been added and quite a few existing MIBs have been modified to the corresponding latest version. Thanks to Thomas Åhlén for pointing this out. Bug #10647
• Fixed issue with OIDs not being merged properly
  The OID tree was previously missing child components (symbols) in some cases. This could occur when the same OID was defined in two MIB files, something commonly used to avoid circular imports. Now all the OIDs are properly merged to any depth, making sure that none are ignored. Thanks to Thomas Åhlén for finding this. Bug #9962
• Fixed issue with MIBs being loaded as often as imported
  Previously it was possible that some base MIBs, that were used in several places, got loaded several times by the MibLoader. This didn't affect the correctness of the results, but wasted time and memory. The MibLoader has now been corrected to avoid this and therefore loads many MIB files faster. Bug #10673
• Fixed OID searching in Mib.getSymbolByOid()
  The Mib.getSymbolByOid() method handled OIDs with table indices erroneously due to a conceptual error. This has now been corrected, but has unfortunately led to a slight API change, removing the exactMatch parameter in the method call. Bug #10765
• Fixed documentation terminology and feature list
  Various pieces of documentation previously used the wrong terminology for SMIv1 and SMIv2, which has now been corrected. Also, the feature list has been updated to be a bit more informative, although documentation will primarily be added to the website from now on. Thanks to David T. Perkins and Frank Fock for pointing out these shortcomings. Bug #10170 & Bug #10262

Version 2.4 (2004-05-27):

• Relicensed to GNU GPL
  Most of the source code has been relicensed to GNU GPL, removing the previous linking exception. As an alternative to using the GNU GPL license, a non-exclusive commercial license for Mibble can be purchased. A FAQ explaining the implications of this is available on the Mibble web site.
• Added simpler OID to symbol lookup
  A new method getSymbolByOid has been added to the Mib class to simplify the lookup of symbols from OIDs. This method handles table row number inside OIDs, that the getSymbolByValue method couldn't handle. Bug #9117
• Changed MIB loader to search inside files
  If the MibLoader fails to locate a MIB file based on its name, it will now resort to read the first few lines from all files in the search path until a matching MIB name is found. Opening many files may be a potential performance bottleneck, so it is still recommended best practice to name MIB files according to the MIB module name. Bug #8862
• Changed some symbol import errors to warnings
  Missing imports for symbols where the other symbols are imported from the right MIB is no longer an error. A recovery mechanism has been added searching for an undefined symbol in all imported MIB files, issuing a warning instead of an error if the symbol was found. Bug #8863
• Changed to a simpler Ant build file
  The build.xml file for Apache Ant distributed with Mibble has been simplified. It now also contains some documentation to make it easier to use. Bug #9097

Version 2.3 (2004-03-10):

• Added graphical MIB browser
  A graphical MIB browser has been added that allows for easy viewing of a MIB contents, while also sending SNMP requests for objects. Many thanks to Watsh Rajneesh and HP India for contributing the code. Thanks also to Charles F. Schatz for providing an alternate implementation. Bug #4366
• Added shell scripts for launching utilities
  Shell scripts for Unix and Windows have been added for launching the Mibble utility programs. The original scripts were contributed by Watsh Rajneesh. Bug #6961
• Added API for loading MIBs from more sources
  Added new addResourceDir() method to the MibLoader class, allowing usage of the Java ClassLoader for locating and loading MIB files. Also, new load(URL) and load(Reader) methods has been added to simplify loading MIBs from other sources. The MibblePrinter and MibbleValidator programs have also been extended to also support URLs. Thanks to Yun Freund for suggesting this. Bug #7746
• Added support for unloading MIBs
  Added new unload() methods to the MibLoader class. It is now possible to remove references to a single MIB without losing the references to all MIBs. Bug #7616
• Added method for retrieving all OID children
  Added new getAllChildren() method to the ObjectIdentifierValue class. This makes it easier to retrieve all OID children at once. Bug #8046
• Modified the API for MibLoader.load() slightly
  The various load() methods in the MibLoader class have had their API slightly modified. They are now declared to throw IOException instead of the previous FileNotFoundException in order to accomodate the new load(URL) and load(Reader) methods. Bug #7746
• Modified OID child ordering
  The ObjectIdentifierValue child ordering has been changed from undefined to numerical order. The new implementation is actually faster than the previous one, due to more clever object comparison than previously used. Bug #8090
• Fixed issue with not always finding loaded MIBs
  Previously when loading named MIBs, the search path was first used to locate the MIB file. If the MIB file couldn't be found in the path, an exception is thrown. The MibLoader has now been extended to first check the loaded MIB names, thereby making it possible to manually load MIB files not adhering to the MIB file naming standard. Thanks to Zemian Deng for pointing this out. Bug #6959
• Fixed problem loading MIBs from current directory
  When loading MIB files from the current directory with the MibblePrinter or MibbleValidator application, the directory wasn't correctly added to the MibLoader path. This has now been fixed, so MIB imports now works correctly even for file names without a directory portion. Bug #6528

Version 2.2 (2003-11-03):

• Added support for ASN1.1 type tags
  All primitive type now have default ASN.1 type tags and these may also be overridden by tags in the MIB files. New methods isPrimitive() and getTag() has been added to MibType. Thanks to Sudhir Khurana for pointing this out. Bug #5001 & Bug #5003
• Added validation of sequence elements
  Sequence element names previously weren't validated against the containing MIB. This has now been changed so that sequence elements inside an OBJECT TYPE will be looked up in the MIB. If no symbol with that name could be found, a new default symbol is created. Thanks to Charles F. Schatz for finding and reporting this. Bug #5904
• Added access to referenced type and value symbols
  When resolving type and value references, the referenced symbol name was previously lost and only the type or value information was extracted. This has been fixed and new convenience methods isReferenceTo() in the MibType and MibValue classes have been added. Thanks to Charles F. Schatz for suggesting this. Bug #6112
• Added a number of missing accessor methods
  Several primitive types lacked accessor methods for retrieving the constraints, defined values and similar. The MIB symbols lacked a getMib() method. These accessor methods have now been added. Bug #5007
• Changed the logging API
  The logging API was simplified by removal of the log printing classes. The same functionality is now present directly in the MibLoaderLog class. A new method entries() allows direct retrieval of all log entries from the log, providing a more generic approach than the previous one. Bug #6116
• Improved Javadoc API documentation
  The Javadoc API documentation has been generally improved in various places. References to appropriate RFC documents have been added along with initial package overviews. Bug #6155
• Updated to version 1.4 of Grammatica
  The Grammatica library distributed with Mibble has been updated to version 1.4 (from 1.3). The build file has been simplified as a result of this. Bug #5000
• Removed some previously public methods
  A number of internal methods were previously public although there was no need for them to be. This has been fixed by making them private or package protected. Code that called these methods should be modified to use the correct public counterparts.

Version 2.1 (2003-08-22):

• Corrected MIB symbol value search
  Searching for MIB symbols by value never returned any results in the previous version. Thanks to Nigel Mellor for finding and fixing this. Bug #4893
• Updated to version 1.3 of Grammatica
  The Grammatica library distributed with Mibble has been updated to version 1.3 (from 1.2). Minor changes have been made to the parser to accomodate this. Bug #4903

Version 2.0 (2003-07-19):

• Complete rewrite with API and name change
  The project has been renamed to Mibble, and the library has been completely rewritten from scratch. The API:s have also been replaced to correct a number of serious flaws in the previous design.
• Added complete support for SNMPv2 and SNMPv3
  All types and constructs in SNMPv2 and SNMPv3 are now supported.
• Added a real MIB import mechanism
  Symbol imports are now handled by reading and parsing the MIB file. Standard IANA and IETF MIB files have been added to the JAR library, in order to always have these imports available.
• Added full access to all type information
  All of the type information can now be easily accessed through methods in the type classes.
• Added syntactical and semantical error recovery
  The MIB parser now attempts to recover from errors in the MIB file. All encountered errors are available after the parsing is complete. This change was made available by using Grammatica instead of JavaCC to generate the parser.
• Added warnings for wrong identifier case
  A warning is now issued if the first character in a type identifier is lower-case, or if the first character in a value identifier is upper-case.
• Added HTML release notes
  The release notes are now generated to both text and HTML format from an XML representation.
• Changed parser generator to Grammatica
  The JavaCC parser generator has been replaced with Grammatica. This was done as JavaCC isn't free software, and Grammatica was chosen as it provides a simple grammar syntax, a decent parsing and analysis framework, and very high quality error handling.
• Removed the old symbol tree model
  The symbol tree model has been removed as it was not compatible with the new API:s.

Version 1.2 (2003-03-27):

• Relicensing to GPL + linking exception
  Relicensed all the source code to GPL plus a linking exception. See the new LICENSE.txt file for details.
• Removed JavaCC requirement from Ant build file
  Removed the strict dependency of JavaCC from Ant build file (build.xml). The JavaCC parser generator will be replaced in a future version of the library.

Version 1.1 (2003-01-06):

• Updated MIB syntax to SNMPv2
  The MIB file parser can now handle several new macros, such as MODULE-IDENITY, OBJECT-IDENTITY, NOTIFICATION-TYPE, OBJECT-GROUP, NOTIFICATION-GROUP, MODULE-COMPLIANCE and the improved OBJECT-TYPE macro (as of SNMPv2).
• Updated MIB syntax with textual conventions
  The MIB file parser can now handle the TEXTUAL-CONVENTION macro type.
• API changes breaking backwards compability
  The MIB class was renamed to Mib and several new methods were added to allow easy access to the information in the MIB file. Some old methods were also renamed to better match the new methods.
• Improved code style
  All the source code has been reindented to use four (4) spaces, and various minor code style improvements have been made in the source tree.
• Improved API documentation
  The API documentation has been somewhat improved by adding package descriptions and improving the class comments.
• Added MIB example code
  An example class has been added to demonstrate how the library can be used.
• Added initial test cases
  Some initial test cases have been added, making regression testing easier. Much work is still missing on the test cases, though.

Version 1.0 (2002-08-14):

• First public release
  The first public release of this library.

Mibble 2.5 (2004-10-26). See the Mibble web site for more information.

Copyright © 2004 Per Cederberg. Permission is granted to copy this document verbatim in any medium, provided that this copyright notice is left intact.