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Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] plugins to builtins

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 10:59:04 -0400 (EDT)
Why would a plugin dissector ever be better than a builtin?  I see "development speed" mentioned as a plus, but isn't the lack of "platform independent code" a much greater detriment?
Is there any reason why the current plugins couldn't be converted to built-in dissectors?  I dove in and converted some of the simpler ones (thanks to Anders for the integration), but before I try and tackle the harder ones, I wanted to make sure there wasn't something I'm missing about the process.  To me it mostly looks like files need to be moved and makefiles need to be modified.  Not a hard task, but a somewhat tedious.
So far the only issue I've seen is that some of the "more complex" plug-ins have "subdissectors" each in there own file, but usually not that much code.  As Roland noted in  https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5990#c2, there is understandably some desire to keep the number of dissector files to a minimum.  Does that just turn into "developer preference"?
 
Mike Mann