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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Adding support for a new PCAP-NG block

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2018 00:24:47 -0800
On Jan 17, 2018, at 4:47 AM, Paul Offord <Paul.Offord@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I want to make a start on the plan below.  Last night I took a look at the relevant code.
>  
> I started by adding support for TSDBs into the function pcapng_open(…) in pcapng.c

The *first* thing to do is to start by either

	1) getting an official block type value from pcap-ng-format@xxxxxxxxxxx

or

	2) getting a Private Enterprise Number from the IANA and using a custom block:

		http://xml2rfc.tools.ietf.org/cgi-bin/xml2rfc.cgi?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pcapng/pcapng/master/draft-tuexen-opsawg-pcapng.xml&modeAsFormat=html/ascii&type=ascii#rfc.section.4.7

> but I then stumbled across wtap_opttype_register_custom_block_type(…) in wtap_opttypes.c which seems to be a framework to add support for new block types.  I did a check on code that refers to this function and found that nothing uses it at the moment.

That's correct - pcapng.c doesn't currently support custom blocks.