Most of Wireshark 1.6.x uses GLib memory slices only if built with GLib 2.10 or later; it uses memory chunks otherwise.
However, MATE unconditionally uses memory slices, which means it fails to build with GLib releases prior to 2.10. The configure script, however, only checks for GLib 2.4 or later, so if you try to configure and build on a system with a GLib release between 2.4 and 2.9, the configure script may succeed but the build will fail:
http://ask.wireshark.org/questions/10396/scouce-code-cannot-be-compiled-successfully
Should we change MATE not to require memory slices in the 1.6 branch, or should we change the configure script to require GLib 2.10 for the 1.6 branch? (The trunk requires 2.14 or later.)