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

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 04:10:22 -0800
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.