Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Enable extcap by default or not

[Roland Knall <rknall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:16 AM, Graham Bloice <graham.bloice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I vote for disable by default, I feel that the extcap interfaces are superfluous and confusing to most of the users I support as they are for "niche" purposes.

I don't follow the argument that a user actually needing an extcap interface for their "niche" purpose will find enabling it at all difficult.  If this is felt to be an issue, why not add a top-level menu for extcaps to make their control easier?

A lot of users on my end (around 100 people use the provided extcap at the moment) use Wireshark for capturing and first-glance analysis. They expect the interfaces just to be there, and would default to the built-in interfaces, which would lead to wrong captures and results. I agree, that we have now a lot of special extcap interfaces, but I would have to side with Dario here, it should be the role of the utility to present possibilities. Otherwise only guys specifically looking for some issues will find it, and not everyone will use it.

In my opinion it is more of a question on how to present interfaces to the end-user. Would it not make more sense, to change the way interfaces are shown, instead of hiding them as default? For instance, a "Recent" or "Common" tab and an advanced tab in the interface list would make much more sense. Also adding favorite interfaces to a short-list.

If the major consensus is hiding extcap default interfaces, I'll grudgingly commit to it ;-), but it will present some issues at my end and there will be a lot of users, never using the feature in the first place.

Roland