[LEGO <luis.ontanon@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/28/05, Joerg Mayer <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sat, May 28, 2005 at 10:25:30AM +1000, Michael Cohen wrote:
> >    Would it be worth fixing the build problems first, and then tackling
> >    problems as they arise. For example you mention that libethereal does
> >    not support having multiple instances of everything. Do you mean that
> >    libethereal is not multi-threaded? or that all dissection trees share
> >    common static memory?
> 
> Yes, Ethereal (and especially libethereal) is not threadsave and it will
> be lots of work to make it that. We want to get there eventually, but
> it may take a long time until we actually do. You are free to speed up
> that process of course ;-)

A lot to do:

- tvb_* and proto_tem_* should use a thread safe memory allocation mechanism

- every dissector needs:
   - a container that contains its current static variables
      - a constructor for it
      - a destructor for it
   - replace g_malloc and its clients (printfs too) with something thread safe.

- more, I got scared and even aborted the feasability study.

That's years of work... maybe too many for what we get.

If we realy want to go that way, we better start lying the
infrastructure to do so ASAP, the later we do the more it will take.

A wrapper for libethereal that acts as a server and some IPC mechanism
against it, might be doable. Yes, that'd be ugly and slow, but that's
doable.

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