["Martin Mathieson" <martin.mathieson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> plugins are quite helpful when doing "distributed development" of a
> dissector (and of the depending protocol), where often changes are done
> and has to be distributed across a limited user base, which should maybe
> not being part of the Ethereal release.
>
> And it's easier to replace a DLL instead of the whole exe (sorry, win32
> speak).

I used to produce and distribute private, versioned plugins - I have do
doubt that having the plugin mechanism is very useful (also, my attempts to
build ethereal.exe at the time failed hopelessly, but it was easy to build
plugin DLLs).

But for those dissectors that are already in the ethereal source tree, why
should one be chosen as a plugin? Because they are for obscure protocols? Or
incomplete?  I assume that a security vulnerabilities in plugins are just as
serious as those that are in the main executable...?   I can understand that
having *some* plugins in the source tree helps keep the plugin mechanism/API
in good repair, which is a good thing.

Regards,
Martin