Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] Where is the memory consumed ?

[Pierre JUHEN <pierre.juhen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I am looking for the way to implement an option in tethereal, that would 
regularly sweep the memory, when
tethereal write to a pipe.

The option woud permit to sweep the memory use by packets that are "old" 
(more than x seconds, typically 300/600),
such a way the dissectors have a big enough "backlog" to work, ant 
ethereal would be able to run for a very long time,
eventually forever ?

I read the ring buffer code to find out how the memory is cleaned in 
that case.

Question :

   Where is the memory useb by the packets ?
      on the capture side ?
      on the wtap_dump side ?

   Behing which varaible / pointer ?

Thank you.

Regards,

Pierre Juhen