Huge thanks to our Platinum Members Endace and LiveAction,
and our Silver Member Veeam, for supporting the Wireshark Foundation and project.

Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] INTERLINK dissector plugin added

From: Ed Beroset <beroset@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:57:50 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
Aniruddha A <aniruddha.a@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>How to decide whether a dissector has to be a plugin or a build-in ?
>Is it based on the code size ?
>I have also created a plugin (based on a protocol which is in draft
>state in IETF)
>and the code size is small, I was about to raise patch request on bugzilla,
>but after seeing this post, I am wondering whether to add it to epan/dissectors
>as a single file and then upload the patch.

I once had the same question, but then I found the answer in the Wireshark Developers Guide ( http://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsdg_html/#ChSrcCodeRequirements )

"Submit dissectors as build-in whenever possible. Developing a new dissector as a plugin is a good idea because compiling is quicker, but it's best to convert dissectors to the build-in style before submitting for checkin. This reduces the number of files that must be installed with Wireshark and ensures your dissector will be available on all platforms."

Ed