Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Re: TCP graphs for ethereal

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 17:13:28 -0800
On Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 05:44:01PM +0100, Pavel Mores wrote:
> thanks for your comments. Of course, you're right, and I'm willing to work
> out all the issues you mentioned and then some more but: John McDermott
> wrote that there had been some discussion whether it was correct to have
> graphing incorporated in ethereal and you seem to allude to this topic too.

If the graphing code just takes the capture file and processes it,
producing graphs but not otherwise interacting with the rest of
Ethereal, I'm not certain whether it'd belong in Ethereal - it's not
clear what benefit you get from bundling it into Ethereal.

If, however, the graphing code *does* interact with the rest of
Ethereal, e.g. letting you select a particular conversation and get some
graph of the behavior of the conversation, I'd see it as possibly
appropriate for inclusion in Ethereal.

> I've been unable to find an archive of this discussion so I don't know what
> the results were. If the purists prevailed and not having graphing became
> ethereal's policy then my code has little chance to make it into ethereal
> however good it could be. I'm not a Windows user and as an ethereal user I
> couldn't care less about Windows compatibility. If the code is to remain
> the way it is now, just my personal ethereal extension, there's no point in
> bothering with cross-platform issues. I mean, it would be nice if some
> people compiled the patch (on linux if it doesn't compile anywhere else)
> and told me that it makes sense to work on it some more.

I'm not likely to look at it until I can at least build it on the flavor
of UNIX I mainly use at home (FreeBSD) or at work (Solaris) - my to-do
list on Ethereal is already rather long, as is my to-do list on things
unrelated to software; perhaps somebody else will take a look at it on
Linux, but if you want me to look at it, I'd suggest at least addressing
point 2) and putting in your own declarations for Ethernet, IP, and TCP
headers.