Hello everyone!
I'm afraid that this is a dumb question but has someone done some work to make
dissector writing easier?
I'm thinking about eg a perl-script which gets a c-structure and some base
data (has to be udp packet, on port x, with packet data byte y=z) which
builds a dissector out of this.
I just had a look (in CVS) into packet-dns and packet-udp (which I believed to
be some simple dissectors - but I think I'm wrong :-) and was astonished.
I know that the code is straightforward but the simple work of catching every
change is what holds me back. If there's some script which generates this
data from a c source it would take some work from me.
Or the other way round:
how about building a dissector which ain't attached anywhere by default. It is
configured by a data file (text, generated eg. from c structures by a
perl-script) and applies this data to user-defined packets - this is possible
today, IIRC. (specifying which dissector to use on a class of packets, that
is).
I know that that would be slow but it would be the most dynamic - no more
recompiling, ...
And this preformatted text-files could then, when the development is over, be
converted into c source for speed reasons ...
Regards,
Phil