Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] lightening libethereals dependencies

["Gilbert Ramirez" <gram@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Warnicke" <hagbard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Guy Harris" <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <ethereal-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] lightening libethereals dependencies


> The eventual goal is to split ethereal into clean pieces.  The current 
> goal is to break compile time dependencies of libethereal on 
> everything else in ethereal.    
> 
> There are a couple of tricky things along the way though,  and I would 
> appreciate comments:
> 
> 1) packet.c depends on dissect_frame
> 
> My intention currently is to use the find_dissector,
> call_dissector facilities to make this a run time, rather 
> than compile time, dependency.  

I think packet-frame.c is the only dissector that absolutely needs
to be in libethereal. That is, even if we were to convert *all*
dissectors to plugins, we'd still want to keep dissect_frame()
compiled into libethereal. The dissection has to start *somewhere*,
and as long as libethereal is dependent upon wiretap and is *not*
using any other library for reading files, then the "wiretap dissector",
which dissect_frame() is, needs to be inside libethereal.


--gilbert