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Distributing Pcap applications for Windows?

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First post, by superfury

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I've been wondering something.

Since supporting the UniPCemu server build, I've always included the wpcap.dll and packet.dll files with my releases.
Should those two files even be distributed with the app? Or should the user install the actual used versions of those using the compatible software products (Win10Pcap, npcap, official WinPcap's last version)?

I notice that I have to delete at least the wpcap.dll to properly use some network cards (unless I install one of the above products to make it support it). Although it seems I have to remove packet.dll from the app's folder to properly use the installed pcap alternative?

Anyone knows more about this? How are other applications distributed that use pcap? Do they include some or any of those pcap-related dlls into their packaging?

Author of the UniPCemu emulator.
UniPCemu Git repository
UniPCemu for Android, Windows, PSP, Vita and Switch on itch.io

Reply 1 of 1, by superfury

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I've managed to get UniPCemu to get the pcap library loaded dynamically, like Dosbox-X does (not requiring the library to run at all (dll missing errors)).

So when the next version is released, the pcap library on Windows must be installed by the user itself and will be automatically detected by the app (simply refusing to use the packet server when it's not detected to exist or valid).
The log file for the UniPCemu virtual ethernetcard (logs/ethernetcard.log in the application directory) will contain information about any errors encountered and ignored when starting the app.

That also fixes problems with the official winpcap used (from winpcap.org until now) as well as fixing the dll issues because they're not supplied with the emulator itself anymore (which cause conflicts with the Windows system-wide installed versions of said dlls).

Author of the UniPCemu emulator.
UniPCemu Git repository
UniPCemu for Android, Windows, PSP, Vita and Switch on itch.io

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