Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] [Wireshark-bugs] [Bug 1179] cmake build integration + dbus + bunch of memleak fi

[Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joerg Mayer wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 09:26:50AM +0000, ronnie sahlberg wrote:
>> As someone that has actually studied the feasibility of making
>> wireshark multithreaded and what would be required
>>
>> "... Written with tons of globals variables, non thread safe, ..."
> 
> [Good reasons about the real problems of multithreading and lots of old
> messages removed]
> 
> While that type of usage would be interesting for people with multicore
> machines (like me) I don't think that this is the main reason why people
> talk about multithreading. The real reason might me, that they mean
> reentrancy with different contexts - like being able to run two tabs
> with different capture files in each at the same time.

It looks like we're limited to a single thread for the GUI, at least
under Windows:

  http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gdk/gdk-Threads.html
  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60620

I think multithreaded dissection and supporting multiple capture files
in the same Wireshark instance are both important, but that the need for
multithreaded dissection will become more acute as time goes on.  If
Intel's plans come to fruition, we could be looking at dissecting on a
single core while 79 others sit idle.