FAQ:General 05

What's the difference between UCD-SNMP and Net-SNMP?

Not a great deal, really.
Although the project originally started at UC Davis (hence the name), and it has always been based there, most of the contributors have had little or no connection with this institution.

The move to SourceForge was intended to provide a more flexible environment for the project, and to distribute the administrative workload more evenly. The change of name simply reflects this move, which was the last remaining link with UC Davis.

The 4.2.x line is the last release line that uses the ucd-snmp name, and all releases under this banner will be bug-fixes only. Release 5.0 is the first version using the net-snmp name, and all new features and significant development will be released under this name.
(Though the dividing line between a bug-fix and a new feature is something of a vague one, so some changes in the 4.2.x line may be relatively non-trivial!)

Starting with the 5.0 release, we are also trying to review and rework the underlying code base to improve the readability and maintainability of the package. The 5.0 changes have mostly concentrated on the agent architecture, though there have been some significant changes to the library as well. Future releases may include further restructuring of the library.
This process will probably result in some changes to the API, though we will attempt to retain some form of backwards compatibility as far as possible, and clearly mark anything that has changed. The most significant change with the 5.0 release is a restructuring of the header file organisation - not least a change from <ucd-snmp/xxx.h> to <net-snmp/yyy.h>.

   FAQ:General