[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 04:13:47PM -0600, Neulinger, Nathan R. wrote:
> I was thinking it would be nice if ethereal included a super-stripped-down
> version of tethereal. Basically a "capture only" tool. All it should be able
> to do is dump data to a file. No dissection, nothing special. I'd suggest
> not including anything beyond the interface to the libpcap/bpf filtering.
> 
> This would be a great lightweight tool to use to just dump the network to a
> file.

Is tcpdump lightweight enough?  It also has dissection, but not as much
as Ethereal/Tethereal.

In any case, the code path for both "tcpdump -w" and "tethereal -w"
shouldn't use the dissection code for either one; does "lightweight"
refer to the code path for capturing and saving to a file, or also to
code that's present but not used in that code path?

> I almost wonder if this would make more sense to be in the libpcap package
> though.

Given that it doesn't include any dissection code, I'd be inclined
either to include it in libpcap or to make it a separate program from
tcpdump.org, if "tcpdump -w" and "tethereal -w" aren't lightweight
enough.