> That being said... just because it's being done other places doesn't mean
> it's a good idea. Wouldn't it make more sense to build an api for
> querying the preference values rather than querying them via
> compile time linking?
It might.
However:
> I'd really like to see as much of the compile time dependencies between
> dissectors go away as possible...
...there are cases where it's not obvious that the dependency isn't
somewhat intrinsic.
For example:
> > packet-rpc.h:extern const value_string rpc_auth_flavor[];
The MOUNT protocol uses the same RPC authentication flavor values as
does the ONC RPC protocol itself, and it'd clearly be bogus to have two
separate value_string tables with identical contents; is it really worth
it to add Yet Another API for that? It makes no sense whatsoever to
build Ethereal with the MOUNT protocol dissector but not the ONC RPC
dissector (given that MOUNT runs atop ONC RPC), so the MOUNT dissector
depends, in effect, on the ONC RPC dissector no matter what you do.
Similarly:
> > packet-wap.h:extern const value_string vals_character_sets[];
both WTLS and WSP presumably use the same character set codes here, and
it's not clear that it makes sense to have some of the WAP family
dissectors without the others.