[Winpcap-users] Wpcap.lib on 64bits Platform

[Fish]

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Gianluca Varenni wrote:

> raymond lim  wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >  
> > Would like to check whether there wpcap.lib is avaliable
> > on 64bits platform. Currently, we could compile wpcap.lib
> > using Visual Studio 2005 on 64 bits Vista.
> 
> At the moment the user level components of WinPcap are 32bit 
> only. This means that on a x64 machine, the driver is 64bit,
> but the user DLLs are 32bit only.

Which is definitely not good since it makes it virtually[1]
impossible for people to develop/market 64-bit products that happen
to use/need WinPcap.


> We have definitely thought of providing both x86 and x64 user
> level DLLs (hence x64 LIB files) but mainly due to lack of 
> resources

What resources are you lacking? Programming help? Hardware? What??


> and the very low number of requests for it, we have never
> actually worked on it.

Perhaps the majority of people/companies needing it have not bothered
to ask for it as they (perhaps naively but that's beside the point)
presumed it would be provided in due time.[2]

Besides, I believe the 100:1 rule of thumb probably applies: if one
person asks for something (or complains about something) chances are
there are 99 more feeling the same way but haven't bothered to voice
their opinion (i.e. they're basically lurkers -- gradually losing
patience lurkers but lurkers nonetheless). <shrug>

It's just a theory mind you. :)


> The main tasks in porting the user level DLLs to x64 are
> 
> - migrate the compilation environment to VS2005 (previous
> do not easily support x64 compilation).
> 
> - compile packet.dll under x64 and understand if we need 
> different packet.dll for XP and Vista.
> 
> - compile wpcap.dll under x64. This can be a lil tricky as
> this library is mostly a port of libpcap under Windows, and
> contains several conditional compilation definitions.
> 
> - modify the installer to install the right DLLs on all the
> various supported OSes.
> 
> - make sure that all the current samples in the devpack
> compile for x64 as well.

Yep. Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.

So if *I* can do it what's *your* excuse?  :)


> Have a nice day

You too Gianluca. :)

- -- 
"Fish" (David B. Trout) - fish(at)infidels.org
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[1] I say "virtually" [impossible] because, even though no 64-bit
packet.dll is currently provided, it *is* nonetheless still possible
to write a 64-bit program that uses WinPcap by simply having it
(marshall? thunk? not sure of the correct terminology here) all
WinPcap requests through a 32-bit child process via some means of
Inter-Process Communication (which I hope you'll agree is a pain in
the you-know-what).

[2] Since you *do* after all provide a 64-bit device driver and
besides, what good is a 64-bit operating system if you can't run
64-bit programs on it?!

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