Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark/Ethereal compatibility

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew.Martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I've developed a dissector using Wireshark 0.99.4, and it works fine. 
> Now during development I'm sure I checked if the dissector worked on 
> ethereal, and again, I'm sure it did. However I didn't check the version 
> number.
>  
> One of the people now testing the dissector has just told me that they 
> get an error with ethereal 0.99.0, which I've just replicated. Does 
> anyone have any input on version number compatibility?

Currently, there are no guarantees that a dissector for version M of 
Wireshark/Ethereal will work on version N, for M != N.  There's probably 
a pretty good chance that it'll work if M < N, but no guarantees.

At some point, we'll probably stabilize the API and ABI, which means 
that, if M is the first version with a stabilized API/ABI, if a 
dissector works with version M it'll work for version N if N >= M.

There will probably never be a guarantee that a dissector that works 
with version M will work with version N if N < M; the dissector might, 
for example, use a feature added after version N.  That's less likely to 
work than the N > M case - an API might be available in version M but 
not version N, if M > N.

Therefore, if you want to make sure a dissector will work with 0.99.0, 
you'll have to develop it with 0.99.0.