Title: Plugin architecture requires
I've been using Ethereal / Wireshark for a few years now, but recently needed to add a custom protocol. In learning about developing for this app, it seems that Ethereal plugins are not based on an API and require the full source to be around to compile since the DLL is forced to call core functions to register itself (and various scripts need to scan the code). Is this correct?
Why not setup an API? If the plugin's gateway functions are passed the information they need, and allowed to return data which is used to register the dissector it would allow plugins to be compiled without the main source, and it would also prevent plugins from breaking with each release. I've seen some commented code blocks talk about this (standardized entry functions) and the roadmap says "make plugin ABI stable" at release 1.0.
Is this already implemented and just not documented? Is there an ongoing discussion of the API that I'm missing? Or is the desire for a plugin structure which doesn't require a complete recompile incompatible with something else?
Thanks for the guidance!
-Andrew
The roadmap I'm referencing is currently located here: http://wiki.wireshark.org/Development/Roadmap
