Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Adding libxml2 as optional Wireshark dependency

[Ahmad Fatoum <ahmad@xxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

I was advised on Gerrit to post this issue here as to garner wider input.

This concerns proposed Change-Id I13c0a2f408fb5c21bad7ab3d7971e0fa8ed7d783 [1] intending to add libxml2 as optional dependency to Wireshark.

I am currently preparing to submit upstream, changes I did to the EPL v2 dissector (packet-epl.c).

A significant change is the ability to optionally read in user-supplied XML device descriptions and to extract type/description/mapping information for aiding the dissection. See this previous submission of mine to the mailing list: https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201701/msg00154.html

Seeing as there also has been interest for libxml2 support in dissectors in the past:

https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201005/msg00108.html

https://ask.wireshark.org/questions/36063/using-libxml2-in-my-own-dissector

I think, it would be a good idea to have this as optional dependency as Glib's GMarkup may be inadequate or inconvenient for parsing actual XML.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Best regards,
Ahmad Fatoum

[1] https://code.wireshark.org/review/#/c/20912/