Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Loading value_string from file?

[Jaap Keuter <jaap.keuter@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Main reason would be startup time. It takes time to load and parse these (Big!) files every time you start up.
Yes, they do change/get amended, therefore we update them for the releases as long as they are maintained.
That should be good enough. It’s a best effort compromise, IMHO.

Thanks,
Jaap


> On 15 Feb 2017, at 14:46, Peter Wu <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> While many protocols have fixed value_string mappings, some of them are
> quite dynamic (USB Vendor/Product IDs, "enterprise-numbers" (sminmpec),
> services, etc.).
> 
> Has there ever been an attempt to load these from file? This has the
> benefit that these files can be updated without having to
> rebuild/install a new version of Wireshark. (Additional benefits: the
> data can be compressed and ignored from Lintian spell-checking.)
> -- 
> Kind regards,
> Peter Wu
> https://lekensteyn.nl