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Compatibility of lua plugin in wireshark?

0

Currently, I have developed my own plugin in lua.In that plugin I have developed my own protocol and dissection using lua APIs(5.2).currently it is working fine and compatible with wireshark version 1.12.5 but I have to provide forward compatibility. Can anyone tell me upto which wireshark version it will be supported??

asked 16 May '15, 12:01

ankit's gravatar image

ankit
65232328
accept rate: 25%


3 Answers:

1

Can anyone tell me upto which wireshark version it will be supported??

No, I don't think so, because there is no official roadmap and no guarantee at all, that the code interfaces will stay untouched for a certain amount of releases. If it's necessary to implement new functionality, the code interface will change and it's up to you, to adjust your code to those changes.

So, if you want your plugin to work for a defined amout of time, you could ship a certain version of Wireshark alongside with your plugin as a package. As long as you adhere to the GPL, that's no problem, even for commercial products.

Regards
Kurt

answered 17 May '15, 06:28

Kurt%20Knochner's gravatar image

Kurt Knochner ♦
24.8k1039237
accept rate: 15%

edited 17 May '15, 06:30

thanks kurt

(17 May '15, 09:50) ankit

1

Kurt's answer is right, but we do try to keep the Lua API backward compatible as much as possible in future releases. For example, if you wrote one that worked in 1.8, the odds are extremely good it will still work in 1.10 and 1.12. I only know of two plugins that didn't continue to work, and that was because we fixed bugs in Wireshark that the old plugins relied on continuing to be bugs - and it was easy to fix the plugins and make them work again.

For the future release 2.0, as it stands right now the only things that won't continue to work are GUI-specific Lua API functions, such as creating a menu item, using a text-window, dialog box, etc. Those will continue to work in the GTK-based Wireshark GUI, but the Qt-based GUI does not have them for Lua yet so that won't work. I'm hoping we get that working before 2.0 is released.

Also, if you'd like to improve the chances of it working in the future, you could submit an enhancement bug and attach your Lua plugin along with a capture file that exercises it, to bugs.wireshark.org, and I'll add it to the test suite.

answered 29 Jun '15, 20:41

Hadriel's gravatar image

Hadriel
2.7k2939
accept rate: 18%

Thanks Handriel for your response.I will try my best to improve in lua as you suggested.

(29 Jun '15, 22:07) ankit

0

You could use _VERSION to get the version of LUA that Wireshark is using and act accordingly.
for example print(_VERSION) will return "Lua 5.2".

answered 01 Jun '15, 14:08

Amine%20Ahd's gravatar image

Amine Ahd
6114
accept rate: 33%