Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Changes to the plugin registration API

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From: João Valverde <j@xxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2023 23:25:05 +0000
Hi,

There are some changes in progress to the plugin registration API that break compatibility and require manual intervention from plugin authors maintaining plugins out-of-tree. These changes are rather minor and concern only plugin registration, not other APIs accessible to plugins.

See MR 13524: https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/13524

Changes required are rewriting the registration code (very easy to do [1]) and declare (using a C enum) that the plugin is released either under GPLv2 or later, or a GPLv2 compatible license. The other changes to the ABI version number are currently not relevant to plugin authors (no policy change is implied), it just uses less boilerplate with macros.

This should improve the plug-in experience for both developers and users and may improve compatibility in the future.

Comments welcome.

Regards,

João

[1]https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/commit/90b16b40921b737aadf9186685d866fd80e37ee6#4a1fe9011e8240918e5fc6230c0bcd2e4d3b9c34