Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Use shared libraries for dissectors?
From: Stephen Fisher <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:30:05 -0600
---- On Fri, 29 Jun 2012 08:23:07 -0600 Richard Sharpe  wrote ---- 

>One of the problems I see is that the startup time of Wireshark can be
>long because of the size of the Wireshark binary. There are a large
>number of protocols in Wireshark now, many of which I don't use. There
>is also the initialization time for each of those protocols.

This idea comes up from time to time, but it ends up being harder than you would think.  Here are some of the discussions from the archives:

    http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/200711/msg00305.html

    http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201104/msg00298.html

I'm sure there are more.