Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] mergecap from fifos

[Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>]

Richard van der Hoff wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The attached patch and replacements of wiretap/file_wrappers.{c,h} 
> address the can't-mergecap-from-fifos problem by adding a layer of 
> buffering to capture file access in wiretap.
>
> This trick only works for capture file formats which can be read 
> incrementally in a single pass, but since that includes libpcap, I've 
> found it to be adequate for my needs.
>
> I've found it works pretty well for me, but please do share any comments.

Hi Richard!

Had a (very) short look at your changes, some things comes to my mind:

As I don't know the "incrementally" details of the different file 
formats, does anyone know which formats won't work, or is this supposed 
to be used only by specific file types? It's simply a "no go" if 
existing file formats will stop working.
Will this slow down file reading?
With using GTK2.6, we need to use the GLib functions (e.g. g_open) 
instead of the plain old open functions. Will this interfere with your 
changes?
If it should be included in the sources, you might split the new 
functionality into a separate file (e.g. file_buffering.c or such).

Regards, ULFL