Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] How to build the simple ASN.1 UDP-based dissector example (foo)

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Apr 13, 2021, at 5:36 PM, Vincent Randal <vtrandal@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> If it’s important not to break wireshark-2.6.20

It's not.

All I'm saying there is that there are different levels of support:

	for Windows and macOS, we do CI builds, so we know Wireshark builds and runs, and supply binaries;

	for Linux, we do CI builds, so we know Wireshark builds and runs, and supply source tarballs, from which many distributions construct packages;

	for FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/DragonFly BSD, we don't currently do CI builds, but that might be worth looking into for at least some of those OSes, and we supply source tarballs, from which at least some of those construct packages, so, to that extent, we know it works;

	for Solaris, we don't do CI builds, but we supply source tarballs, and Oracle might make a package from that - if so, we know that it works;

	for AIX, we don't do CI builds, but we supply source tarballs - however, I don't know whether anybody packages them, so I don't know whether it works;

	for HP-UX, we don't do CI builds, but we supply source tarballs - but the HP-UX Porting and Archive Centre hasn't offered packages for anything newer than 2.6.20, and don't even offer packages for any version of Qt with which Wireshark works, so it might be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make any remotely modern Wireshark work, given that they haven't bothered.

2.6.20 is a *REALLY* out-of-date version, and we don't support it; if somebody *wants* their plugin to work on it, they can try to make it work, but I don't think we think that's at all important.

> and the wide array of operating systems you mentioned previously.

I just mentioned them to indicate why we talk about "Unix and Unix-like systems" rather than "Linux" - we're not a "Windows and Linux" application, or even a "Windows, Linux, and macOS" application, the goal is to work on as many living UN*Xes as we can.  (HP-UX may, at this time, be on life support - I don't think HPE have any plans to port it to x86-64, and they *do* plan to switch to x86-64 for their hardware, given the death of Itanium.)

> Do you use Homebrew or MacPorts to configure your MacOS build environment for Wireshark development?

No, I just use the tools/macos-setup.sh script.

> It’s been awhile since I used either. Also, I wonder if there are issues with Qt vs XQuartz.

The versions of Qt that Wireshark can use all work directly atop whatever Apple calls the graphics layer - they do *NOT* use X11, so they don't require or use Xquartz.

And, most of the time, with a small amount of care your code will work on all platforms - and a generated ASN.1 dissector is probably even *more* likely to Just Work, especially if it doesn't run into any of the compiler warnings our build process turns on, as errors, by default.