Re: [ethereal-dev] Parser

[John McDermott <jjm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>> This could be
>> alleviated by using the dynamic parsing primarily for development and then
>> encouraging folks to add compiled versions when the decoding is mostly 
stable.
>
>And what about some internal (or proprietary) protocols you may have to
>handle with. One would have to adapt his code at each new release since
>I do not think you (and I) will accept any undocumented protocol in
>ethereal ... (or I will commit my own internal protocols, that will save
>a lot of my time :-)

I was talking here about public protocols.  I think proprietary ones should be 
retained in the dynamic specification form.  If a user wants to link them in 
for a particular situation, no reason he/she shouldn't, though.

I have been thinking about what format to use to specify the protocols.  It 
seems that ASN.1 is a good candidate for the packet specifications because 1) 
it is in common use, 2) it is well-specified, 3) it is designed for such use 
and 4) there is free code to implement the parser.

The question I have is, is there some sort of language to specify the 
*protocols*?  That is, do we want a scheme to specify, for example, tftp 
operation and if so, how does one do that?  I have not seen a simple, clean 
way to do that.  There is some sort of commercial parser, and there are Petri 
net specification schemes which would work, but is there something we can use 
for Ethereal?

--john


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Name: John McDermott
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