Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark PIDL generated dissectors

[Joerg Mayer <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx>]

<disclaimer>In reading this mail it sounds somewhat harsh. It's not
intended that way but I'm somewhat sleep deprived right now and don't
want to spend the time rephrasing it.</disclaimer>

On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 12:13:03AM -0700, Matthieu Patou wrote:
> >Which bugnumber(s) are still open?

Not answered.

> Sorry this is not an excuse

This is not an excuse, it's an explanation. Previously I cared about the
dissectors and tried to make sure that the pidl generated dissectors were
changed at the source. So it was manually monitored because this happened
time and again.

> I mean you can complain that it's hard
> to run pidl but if a file is autogenerated with a big fat warning at
> the top you don't modify it by hand.

Actually it is quite easy to miss: Opening a file at a specific line
(first match of some RE) or running an automated script on a file.

> [...] here it looks more like a bit of lazyness sure doing the right fix
> is more complicated but in the long run it's a big win for
> everybody.

Of course it is some sort of lazyness. But without that lazyness even more
patches remain unapplied (which is another of your complaints). What we
need is some way to notice that we are patching a generated file or to make
sure we "can't" modify generated files. Your email caused a thread on how
to fix this problem *reliably* on wireshark-dev.

> As I said in another thread:
> 
> "We might have some work to do to insure that the regenerating the
> files for wireshark is as simple as checking out the samba-tree and
> running the pidl command. "

So I need to check out a huge code base to just get a small tool? How about
moving pidl into a sub-git that can be ckecked out without needing to check
out the whole of samba?

> Also maybe it would be nice that I can modify the page
> http://wiki.wireshark.org/Pidl to have a simple guide there too,
> this page is way too complicated and ihmo not completely accurate.

As you are one of the people who are quite likely to know best what is
amiss with that page, the solution with the least total time invested
in the correction would probably be that you correct that page.

Ciao
     Jörg
-- 
Joerg Mayer                                           <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx>
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that
works. Some say that should read Microsoft instead of technology.