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

From: Bill Meier <wmeier@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 14:02:04 -0400
On 9/9/2016 1:42 AM, Roland Knall wrote:
Hello List

There is currently a discussion going on
in https://code.wireshark.org/review/#/c/17498 in regard to enabling
extcap features by default or not.

There are basically two sides to the argument:

Cons - extcap interfaces are advanced features, which will not be used
by a majority of users. As more and more of those interfaces emerge, it
clutters up the list. Therefore disabling them by default and enabling
them when needed is ok.

Pros - There are users out there, who use Wireshark solely together with
extcap interfaces. Lots of those users are not very familiar with
Wireshark in general. extcap was intended to bring capture device
support to Wireshark where otherwise it would not be present or very
complicated to do so. For those users to enable the support before using
it seems like an unnecessary hassle.

I just wanted to get the meaning of the list, on how we should proceed
here, and if three are other arguments for or against enabling extcap by
default.

To clarify, I am a Pro guy as I fear 3rd party users will not understand
this and this will lead to support cases which will generate the opinion
"Wireshark is overly complicated, let's use something else".

regards
Roland



Does "enabling extcap features by default" mean that additional programs ("extcaps" ?) are automatically loaded and started when wireshaark is started ?