On Oct 17, 2016, at 7:18 AM, Joerg Mayer <jma...@loplof.de> wrote: > I tried to recall why building with libpcap is optional and failed.
The reasons I can see for supporting building without libpcap on UN*X are: 1) some people might want a version of Wireshark that can read captures but can't capture traffic; 2) some platforms might not have libpcap. I'm not all that sympathetic to reason 1); I'll let those who want to defend it do so. As for 2): 1) most Linux distributions, the *BSDs, macOS, Solaris, and AIX come with libpcap in recent releases; 2) libpcap can be built and installed on HP-UX and older versions of Solaris and AIX; 3) it can also be built and installed on other UN*Xes - even if there's no native capture mechanism, where you get a "stub" version of the capture mechanism and don't actually get any interfaces on which to capture; so I'm not that sympathetic to reason 2), either. As for Windows, the Developer's Guide tells you how to install the WinPcap SDK. So I wouldn't personally have a problem with requiring libpcap to be installed on UN*X and the WinPcap SDK to be installed on Windows if you want to build Wireshark. I'll let those who *would* have a problem argue in favor of their position. ___________________________________________________________________________ Sent via: Wireshark-dev mailing list <wireshark-dev@wireshark.org> Archives: https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev Unsubscribe: https://www.wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev mailto:wireshark-dev-requ...@wireshark.org?subject=unsubscribe