On Feb 26, 2011, at 11:07 AM, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> I wanted to compare two captures a few days ago and I could not think
> of any way to do that with Wireshark on Mac OS X (10.6 or something).
Run multiple instances of Wireshark.
OS X's GUI-application model is different from the common Windows and UN*X+X11 model; in the former, one process handles all open files, and in the latter, separate processes are started for each open file. In *some* instances, one process handles multiple open items - e.g., Web browsers usually have one process to handle all windows, and some terminal emulators have one process for all windows.
Wireshark is written for the common Windows and UN*X+X11 model (that's not surprising, as it was originally developed for UN*X+X11), and currently can't implement the OS X model - that'd take a significant amount of work. It's an X11 application, even on OS X, so to act as a "normal" OS X application requires a wrapper app; the wrapper app we're using in the OS X binary distribution appears to be smart enough that if, for example, you double-click on multiple files, it starts multiple instances of Wireshark.
