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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Controlling the location of plugins directory

From: Richard van der Hoff <richardv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:06:55 +0100
Bob Doolittle wrote:
Jeff Morriss wrote:
Bob Doolittle wrote:
Hi,

Can wireshark handle env-variable control of the
location of the plugins directory (similar to
LD_LIBRARY_PATH etc)?

I haven't found it, and desperately need it.  I
work in an environment where I commonly use
several platforms, including Solaris sparc and x86
as well as various Linux distros.  So I need to build
architecture-dependent versions of a plugin, and
currently can't find a way to deploy this in an
easy fashion in the $HOME directory.
Take a look at bug 1476:

http://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1476

It looks like what you want may be (partially) implemented already.

Very cool, thanks!  This would indeed solve my issue.
However, I'm not a bugzilla jock.  It looks to me like somebody
has submitted a patch, but it hasn't been integrated into the main
source yet (Status=NEW).  Is that correct?

The comments are probably more reliable than the status settings in our bugzilla... In this case, Ryan submitted a patch, but Ulf replied that the functionality was already present in a slightly different format.

I could always build my own, but that sort of defeats the purpose
(i.e. I wouldn't need the plugin in my home directory - I could just
put it into my built copies of wireshark).

Hrm; well, we don't do binary builds except for win32 and afaik we don't have any immediate plans for a release, so it's going to be a while before your favourite distro picks up any changes we make - so you're probably going to be stuck with building your own for a while, anyway...

What about preferences, do they get stored in $WIRESHARK_HOME
as well?  That would be unfortunate - it would be undesirable to
maintain multiple copies...

Yes. You could symlink all the versions together though?

It would be good to know if "-P persconf" solves your usecase.

Cheers

Richard