Ethereal-dev: RE: [Ethereal-dev] Where I am up to in generating a dissector

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From: Jeff Foster <jfoste@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 09:56:07 -0500
per Richard Sharpe:

> Attached is some code that represents where I am up to in generating a
> dissector from an XML-based description.
> 
> Things like SMB will be very easy, compared to the identd protocol.
> 

In the proto_reg_handoff_identd routine you are doing a dissector_delete,
I don't think this is needed because the old dissector would be over-
written by the dissector_add routine.  The old dissector isn't saved.
The initial idea for dissector_delete was to allow a second dissector to
be installed for a port then removed later in the capture when it wasn't
needed.  This reasoning was wrong, once installed a dissector remains 
forever because it is needed to do the protocol tree display when a
summary line is clicked on. 

We should obsolete the dissector_delete routine unless anyone can come up
with a good use for it.

Besides that this it looks great. I assume that this is the output of the
program to convert the XML definition to C code.  Can we see the XML input
that was used to generate this file?

Jeff F.
jfoste@xxxxxxxxxxxx