Pascal,
That question makes a lot of sense actually. You are correct, Wireshark and Wirebait don't use the same version of Lua and I can think of 2 kinds of compatibility "challenges":
- Compatibility between Wireshark and Wirebait:
Wireshark and Wirebait never interact with each other. Wirebait is only used when you run your dissector without Wireshark, so Wireshark never even loads Wirebait code.
- Compatibility between a plugin developed with Wirebait and Wireshark: your point was probably that someone could write a plugin using syntax only available in 5.3. This is definitely possible, which is why a 5.2 version is on the back burner. I have used 5.3 for convenience, and at this stage of the project I don't think this is going to be a big issue. If you are aware of the syntactic differences, you can write a 5.2 compatible dissector and run it on Wirebait 5.3.
Hi Markus,
I'm not a Lua user but it definitely sounds interesting. One remark though (coming from someone not knowing much about Lua, so please forgive me if it's nonsense).
Wireshark only supports Lua 5.2.X, not Lua 5.3.X. So it only supports the older syntax and I understood there was some subtle differences between both. Isn't there a risk that your emunation behaves differently than Wireshark in some corner cases due to this?
Best regards,
Pascal.