[pcap-ng-format] Proposal for new "custom" option codes

[Guy Harris]

On Jul 22, 2015, at 11:14 AM, Hadriel Kaplan <the.real.hadriel at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we need a way for blocks/options:
> 1) To survive file "re-writing" - i.e., being merged, filter-based
> exported, etc.

That's why I added those plugin mechanisms to libwireshark.  There still need to be more plugins, to handle merging, as merging may require changes to the contents (for example, re-assigning interface IDs and mapping interface IDs in input packets from the input files to interface IDs in the output file).

Once full pcap-ng support is added to libpcap, it'll need a similar mechanism to support extensions.

Without that, there's no way to guarantee that blocks and options will survive file re-writing unless we ban the use of pcap-ng on most if not all POWER/PowerPC/Power ISA machines, SPARC machines, PA-RISC machines, System/390 and z/Architecture machines, etc., etc., etc. (see partial Conan the Barbarian quote in my previous message :-)).