Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Why does the extcap stuff take so long to start up?
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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2017 16:05:45 -0700
$ time ./tshark -r /tmp/nothing.pcap	# reading an empty pcap file
					# with all the extcap binaries present
real    0m4.089s
user    0m0.694s
sys     0m2.637s

$ time ./tshark -r /tmp/nothing.pcap	# reading the same empty pcap file
					# with the extcap binaries removed
real    0m0.540s
user    0m0.310s
sys     0m0.220s

So it took *four seconds* of real time, and over *two seconds* of system-mode CPU time, to run, I guess, extcap_register_preferences(), and all the stuff it runs.

Does it need to take that long?

If it does need to take that long, do we need to do that if we're not capturing?