Libraries
Introduction
Several libraries are needed to build / run Ethereal. Most of the
libraries are splitted into three packages:
Runtime package: binaries (e.g. win32 DLL's) and alike
Developer package: documentation, header files and alike
Source package: library sources, usually not required to
build ethereal
Tip!
Win32: All required libraries for the MSVC
generation are available at:
,
but see for an easier way to install the
libraries.
Win32: Automated library download
Tip!
It's a really good idea to use the Win32 automated library download to
install the required libraries as it makes this download very easy.
Warning!
The library zip files on the server and in the setup target will match
only for the latest sources, as old zip files will be moved into the
old folder on the server. So you cannot use the
setup target for "old" (this may even include the released) sources!
You can download/install all required libraries by using the setup target
of the Makefile.nmake from the source package.
Before you start the download, you must have installed both
the required tools (see ) and also the
Ethereal sources (see ).
By default the libraries will be downloaded and installed into
C:\ethereal-win32-libs.
You can change this to any other location by editing the file
config.nmake and changing the line containing
the ETHEREAL_LIBS setting to your favourite place (use an absolute path
here).
Then enter at the command line:
> nmake -f Makefile.nmake setup
This will first check for all the various tools needed to build Ethereal,
as described already in .
Then it will download the zipped libraries into the directory specified by
ETHEREAL_LIBS and install (unzip) all required library files there.
If you have problems downloading the library files, see the wget proxy
comment in .
Update of a previous download
As new versions of the libraries become available, maybe with bugfixes or
some new functionality, your libraries get outdated.
You could simply remove everything in the ETHEREAL_LIBS dir and call the
setup target again, but that would require to download every file again
(currently about 33MB), which isn't necessary.
The following will bring your libraries up to date:
Update your Ethereal sources to the latest SVN files (see ), so the zip filenames in the setup target
of Makefile.nmake is in sync with the library zip files on the server.
Remove all files previously unzipped from the downloaded files in your
ETHEREAL_LIBS library path (all the subdirs, e.g.
c:\ethereal_libs\gtk+),
except for the zip files located at the toplevel, which are the files
downloaded the last time(s). You could do this, be entering at the command line:
> nmake -f Makefile.nmake clean_setup
Start the setup target described above. As wget will download only the
missing files, existing zip files in the ETHEREAL_LIBS dir won't be
downloaded again. Outdated zip files shouldn't do any harm.
GTK+ / GLib / GDK / Pango / ATK / GNU gettext / GNU libiconv
The Glib library is used as a basic platform abstraction library, it's
not related to graphical user interface (GUI) things. For a detailed
description about GLib, see .
The GTK and it's dependant libraries are used to build Ethereal's GUI.
For a detailed description of the GTK libraries, see .
All other libraries are dependant on the two libraries mentioned above,
you will typically not come in touch with these while doing Ethereal
development.
As the requirements for the GLib/GTK libraries increased in the past, it
depends on the GLib/GTK versions you have, which additional libraries are
required. The 1.x versions only needed GLib/GDK/GTK+, while the 2.x
versions require all mentioned libs.
Unix
The GLib/GTK+ libraries are available for many unix-like platforms and
cygwin.
If these libraries aren't already installed and also not available as a
package for your platform, you can get them at:
.
Win32 MSVC
You can get the latest version at:
.
Net SNMP (previously known as "ucd-snmp")
"Various tools relating to the Simple Network Management Protocol"
Unix
If this library isn't already installed and also not available as a
package for your platform, you can get it at:
.
Win32 MSVC
Ethereal uses the source Net-SNMP distribution at
.
Then libsnmp is compiled with the "libsnmp - Win32 Release" project
using MSVC++ 6.0. A file called "README.ethereal" has been placed in the
net-snmp zip archive at
describing the changes in more detail.
GNU ADNS (optional)
"Advanced, easy to use, asynchronous-capable DNS client library and
utilities."
Unix
If this library isn't already installed and also not available as a
package for your platform, you can get it at:
.
Win32 MSVC
You can get the latest version at:
PCRE(optional)
"Perl compatible regular expressions"
Unix
If this library isn't already installed and also not available as a
package for your platform, you can get it at:
.
Win32 MSVC
You can get the latest version at:
zlib (optional)
"zlib is designed to be a
free,
general-purpose, legally unencumbered -- that is, not covered by any
patents -- lossless data-compression library for use on virtually any computer
hardware and operating system."
Unix
If this library isn't already installed and also not available as a
package for your platform, you can get it at:
.
Win32 MSVC
You can get the latest version at:
(A version for the MSVC2003 compiler can be found at:
)
libpcap/WinPcap (optional)
"packet capture library"
Unix: libpcap
If this library isn't already installed and also not available as a
package for your platform, you can get it at:
.
Win32 MSVC: WinPcap
You can get the "Windows packet capture library" at:
Win32: GTK WIMP (optional) for GTK 2.x only
"GTK-Wimp ("Windows impersonator") is a GTK theme that blends well into
the Windows desktop environment."
Wimp is only available for the GTK2.x versions at:
.