Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] possible future feature idea?

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> It would be nice if ethereal had a command line capture mode that didn't
> require X. Seems like most of the functionality is there already. (Maybe
> even have it mimic tcpdump syntax?)
> 
> This would be nice for cases where you just wanted to do a capture, but
> didn't want to bring up a full X session. 
> 
> It would also eliminate the need to install both tcpdump and ethereal.

A long time ago, Gilbert cooked up something along those lines, as a
prototype.  (It stubbed out a pile of routines, so it wasn't a
"product".)

The stuff he's been doing to put all the GTK+ stuff into the "gtk"
directory should, when done, enable us not only to have a
"tcpdump"/"snoop"-style command-line capture program, but a
"curses"-based capture program (I think that was one of the things
Gilbert was talking about doing), as well as versions for toolkits other
than GTK+ (as long as you're willing to use GLib with a non-GTK+
application).