why is 3.3.8 the latest available?

"The latest" doesn't mean a lot in Ubuntu. If a package is working and has no significant identified issues or bugs then it will remain.

In Ubuntu (especially in the LTS releases), stability is champion. There may be a PPA with a newer version and you are free to use these at your own risk.

Ubuntu is not a roiling release distribution and packages rarely stay bang up to date.

What exact feature do you need in the newer version that isn't in the current version?

If you report a bug and the bug fixes are desirable then the package mayl be updated sooner.

> What exact feature do you need in the newer version that isn't in the current version?

Specifically, this:

http://readlist.com/lists/squid-cache.org/squid-users/11/58389.html

But figured if you are going to update, may as well get the most bang for your buck and go to the latest.

Also, while I can get behind "stability is champion" even the most recent development release of Ubuntu still has that old 3.3.8 in it.

It does not seem unreasonable to refresh up to the latest stable releases when developing a new release.

All I can suggest is that you report a bug

The situation is a side effect of Ubuntu being a derivative distribution, low down on the release chain. Overall a major case of bad luck really. If any one of several technical delays had been shorter Ubuntu would be distributing 3.4 or 3.5 Squid versions today.

Debian went into a release freeze for Jesse late in 2014 with 3.3.8 package version. Since that freeze ended mid 2015 it has taken some time to update the Debian packages to newer version. Debiain went through a squid3/squid package renaming transition which menat a lot of extra QA slowed the normal speed of release down. Then the Debian as a whole went through a transition to GCC 5. Which further delayed the squid packages by a month.

Meanwhile the Ubuntu Wily release freeze began before the newer upstream Debian packages were finalized. So the latest version available when Ubuntu did its pre-freeze sync was still 3.3.8.

Year after year I am astonished that squid has been kept back in Ubuntu, when all other distros update this important and hugely popular software with every release.
Squid 3.3 became DEPRECATED in 2013 !!!

http://wiki.squid-cache.org/Squid-3.3

Please read the note from the squid page:

"Squid-3.3 is CONSIDERED DANGEROUS as the security people say. Due to unfixed vulnerabilities CVE-2014-7141, CVE-2014-7142 and CVE-2014-6270 and any other recently discovered issues."

Can you PLEASE update it to 3.5.x (as 3.4 is also marked DEPRECATED) in 16.04 LTS ?

Thank you all for helping update squid to 3.5 in Xenial 16.04 LTS !

I see the version is 3.5.12 and have a related question, will Xenial be getting 3.5.14, 3.5.17 etc over time, or will it stay at 3.5.12 ?