Ethereal-dev: RE: [Ethereal-dev] XML Usage

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From: "James Duke" <Jim-Duke@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 21:10:43 -0500
On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 Guy Harris Wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 04:26:45PM -0500, Jim Duke wrote:
> > My preference would be to declare the enumerations (and the field
> > structure definitions) in XML and provide an XML parser that would
> > register the field arrays during initialization from XML data files.
> 
> Would that require that Ethereal be linked with an XML library? If so,
> your dissector would have to be conditionally included, so that it's
> built in only if an XML library is present.  (*Requiring* an XML
library
> for Ethereal would not be desirable - I'd prefer not to add more
> required libraries, although libraries that, if present, mean Ethereal
> can do more are OK.)

If I decide to use that method - then yes, the dissector would require
an XML library.  And yes, I would certainly add the checks to the
configure script and affected code files to conditionally compile those
parts that are dependent on that new library.  I have worked for a
number of years with autoconf and automake, so that is a matter of
course for me.

Also, I would assume that the preference would be to stay pure C, which
would imply that I should stay away from any C++ XML parsers...  I'm
leaning towards the GNOME libxml2 parser, but I'm open to suggestions.

Jim Duke