Re: Making zlib a required dependency

[João Valverde <joao.valverde () tecnico ulisboa pt>]

Hi,

On 11-11-2017 15:21, Pascal Quantin wrote:
> Hi João,
>
> 2017-11-11 16:04 GMT+01:00 João Valverde 
> <joao.valverde () tecnico ulisboa pt 
> <mailto:joao.valverde () tecnico ulisboa pt>>:
>
>     I pushed a change making zlib 1.2.3 or greater a required build
>     dependency:
>
>     https://code.wireshark.org/review/#/c/24352/1
>     <https://code.wireshark.org/review/#/c/24352/1>
>
> Why this change?  Is it because you fear we might not test the 
> conditional compilation without zlib often enough? Or is it because you 
> believe almost (all?) already compile with zlib anyway.

Don't have strong feelings about this, but it's that, plus its ubiquity 
and portability, plus maintenance and readability, plus the fact that 
not having it makes for a degraded product, without support for 
compressed capture files and dissection of trivially compressed 
protocols, so it doesn't seem worth not requiring it IMO.

> When looking at the -dev mailing list history, some people were (are?) 
> still building Wireshark without zlib (see for example the thread 
> starting here: 
> https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201209/msg00187.html or 
> the fact that people once in a while upload patches to fix build without 
> zlib).

The question would be why. That message mentions Wireshark is much 
faster when built without zlib, I was not aware of that and I find it 
pretty surprising.

Obviously if you're doing compression it's going to be slower, that goes 
without saying.

> Regards,
> Pascal.
>
>
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