Guy, Ulf,
I appreciate your input on the subject.
I think I found an acceptable workaround for this issue which does not require Ethereal change or any special effort developing Ethereal plugin dissector. The solution is - for a user on a multiple user UNIX system a symbolic link named "plugins" will be created in "$HOME/.ethereal" from a configuration script. The symbolic link will point to a directory with set of plugins that are prepared by administrator to serve specific version of the system. This way we have one set of plugins per system version and one Ethereal installation. On Windows the plugins will be copied into user's directory. This also resolves possible confusion if new Ethereal is installed, since the dissectors are in user's directory.
I did not see this solution before because I did not know that ethereal supports "plugins" in user's home dir. I found out about it after looking at ethereal source - Open Source works!
Best regards,
Alex
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Guy Harris
> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 12:34 PM
> To: Ethereal development
> Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Ethereal plugin versioning question
>
>
> Filonenko Alexander-AAF013 wrote:
>
> > Protocol does not carry versioning info, so it is the user
> who has to
> > make a choice of what protocol version needed before Ethereal start.
>
> If you have a single dissector that dissects all versions, with a
> preference setting to specify which version, the user doesn't have to
> choose before starting Ethereal - they can change it while
> Ethereal is
> running.
>
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