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Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Porting Wireshark to Mac OS X

From: "Romain Goyet" <r.goyet@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 23:28:48 +0100
Hi there,

 So, I've seen that some people before me offered to port Wireshark
to Mac OS X, but eventually didn't :-). So, don't get me wrong, I know
WireShark already runs really well on Apple's OS, but it doesn't
natively. Here are the options I already gave a try :

-> Build GTK+ and its dependencies, and then run Wireshark under
Apple's X11. That works just fine, but it's a pain in the *** to
build. It takes forever, you have to keep tweaking makefiles, etc...
For the average hacker, it's doable, but it's absolutely impossible
for a typical user.

-> Use the Quartz port of GTK+. This is a pretty good option. But it
has two drawbacks : first, the UI is still grey-ish, and really
doesn't fit well with other Aqua apps. That's just a visual problem,
but that does matter. Secondly, this port of GTK+ is still a very
early port, and it's pretty buggy. Anyway, its author himself says
it's not ready for production yet.

So, what do you guys think ? I'd be willing to help make a native Mac
OS X GUI for WireShark, but I don't know wether it's really worth it.

In case you think it'd be a good idea, how much work would that
represent ? From what I've seen in the sourcecode, it looks like
wireshark is really tied to GTK+. The problem is that the UI part is
virtually undocumented. And what about "libwireshark" ? Is it a
library that basically does everything, and the GTK+ UI just links to
it and displays the results ?

I'd be glad to have your advice about all this, since I don't want to
start a job that'd be either too hard for me, or just useless

Regards,

Romain Goyet