Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Controlling the location of plugins directory

[Richard van der Hoff <richardv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob Doolittle wrote:
> Jeff Morriss wrote:
> > Bob Doolittle wrote:
> >   
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Can wireshark handle env-variable control of the
> > > location of the plugins directory (similar to
> > > LD_LIBRARY_PATH etc)?
> > >
> > > I haven't found it, and desperately need it.  I
> > > work in an environment where I commonly use
> > > several platforms, including Solaris sparc and x86
> > > as well as various Linux distros.  So I need to build
> > > architecture-dependent versions of a plugin, and
> > > currently can't find a way to deploy this in an
> > > easy fashion in the $HOME directory.
> > >     
> > Take a look at bug 1476:
> >
> > http://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1476
> >
> > It looks like what you want may be (partially) implemented already.
>
> Very cool, thanks!  This would indeed solve my issue.
> However, I'm not a bugzilla jock.  It looks to me like somebody
> has submitted a patch, but it hasn't been integrated into the main
> source yet (Status=NEW).  Is that correct?

The comments are probably more reliable than the status settings in our 
bugzilla... In this case, Ryan submitted a patch, but Ulf replied that 
the functionality was already present in a slightly different format.

> I could always build my own, but that sort of defeats the purpose
> (i.e. I wouldn't need the plugin in my home directory - I could just
> put it into my built copies of wireshark).

Hrm; well, we don't do binary builds except for win32 and afaik we don't 
have any immediate plans for a release, so it's going to be a while 
before your favourite distro picks up any changes we make - so you're 
probably going to be stuck with building your own for a while, anyway...

> What about preferences, do they get stored in $WIRESHARK_HOME
> as well?  That would be unfortunate - it would be undesirable to
> maintain multiple copies...

Yes. You could symlink all the versions together though?

It would be good to know if "-P persconf" solves your usecase.

Cheers

Richard