Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Moving of prefs.c/.h and alike

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ulf Lamping wrote:

> As I'm glad to see that you that you are moving the dissector specific 
> helper files to epan, I'm unsure if the prefs.c/.h in their present 
> state should be moved there, because the prefs.c contains a ot of 
> GTK/GUI related stuff.
>
> Maybe it's an idea to split the parts of that file, but I didn't had a 
> closer look at it.
>
> Do we have a general idea/guideline, which files should be in the epan 
> dir and which files should stay in the root dir? I would think that 
> dissection specific things should go to epan and general Ethereal things 
> should stay in the root dir, is that correct?

I personally think everything that is part of libethereal should be in 
epan or subdirectories thereof.

This might mean that the code should be restructured to move some stuff 
out of libethereal.

I might be tempted to rethink the way we do preferences.  I'd mentioned 
some of this a while ago, but the preferences should perhaps be divided 
into at least two categories - the protocol preferences are arguably 
somewhat different from at least some of the other preferences, because

	1) the protocol preferences might be changed for different captures, 
while the other preferences are more likely to be set once and left 
alone after that;

	2) changing a protocol preference requires a redissection, so it could 
take a significant period of time, but changing most other preferences 
don't.

I might be inclined to store most of the non-protocol preferences in the 
"recent" file, and be saved immediately, with no "Save" button - and 
have them take effect immediately, with no "Apply" button.  (In fact, we 
could arguably get rid of the "Name Resolution" preferences page, given 
that you can control it from the "View" menu.)

I'd rename the protocol preferences "protocol settings", or something 
such as that - and perhaps put them under "Analyze" (just as "Enabled 
Protocols" is under "Analyze") - and have it still have "Save" and 
"Apply" buttons, although I might call "Save" "Save as defaults" or 
something such as that.  (If we do that, I'd do the same with "Enabled 
Protocols".)

Most of the preferences other than protocol preferences are GUI-related, 
and the code to implement them could arguably be moved out of Ethereal. 
 "Printing" is also Ethereal-only.  "Columns", "Capture", and "Name 
Resolution" apply to both.

Given that, we might want to have multiple files for the settings - one 
for stuff common to Ethereal and Tethereal, one for Ethereal-specific 
stuff, and one for the protocol settings.  The protocol settings code 
would go into libethereal, but the code for the other settings would be 
in the top-level directory.  (We might keep the Ethereal-only and the 
Ethereal+Tethereal preferences in the same file.)