Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] RFC: move packet count code (capture info dialog) from capture_loop.c to main.c?

[Thomas Steffen <steffen.list.account@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/3/05, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Summary: The capture process won't show *anything* by itself. It will
> only provide information to the main process, with the following
> messages (copied from capture_sync.c):
>
> #define SP_FILE         'F'     /* the name of the recently opened file */
> #define SP_ERROR_MSG    'E'     /* error message */
> #define SP_PACKET_COUNT 'P'     /* count of packets captured since last
> message */
> #define SP_DROPS        'D'     /* count of packets dropped in capture */.
>
> This way we don't need to tell the capture child anything about which
> mode Ethereal is currently using.
>
> However, we might need a command line option for the capture child, if
> it's used as a standalone tool, but that's a different story.

I completely agree, but I would like to add one point:

The capture child should be a separate executable. There is no reason
to load all of GTK, initialise the plugins etc, if you only want to
capture packets from the network. Especially because the capture
process usually has to run as root, making it small should be better.

But obviously this is only the last step of the process, not the
first. So it may not be too relevant right now.

Thomas