Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] New dissector

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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 10:06:27 -0700
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 06:08:29PM +0200, philippe.vivarelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I need to add a dissector to ethereal, for a low level protocol (just like
> IP, ARP, etc..)
> 
> I just started to look at the documentation, and I don't really understand
> why there are builtin protocol dissectors and plugin dissectors.

Well, one reason is "because plugin dissectors weren't present in the
first release of Ethereal" - therefore, the dissectors *had* to be
builtin.

Another reason is that not all platforms on which Ethereal runs
necessarily support a run-time linking mechanism that GLib's module code
(which is what Ethereal uses to load plugin dissectors) supports, so
moving *all* dissectors into plugin modules would remove support for
those platforms.

> Could someone tell me if a plugin can works for a low level protocol ?

Yes, it should be possible to have a plugin dissector for a protocol
that runs at the same level as IP and ARP.