Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Re: recursive taps

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From: "Pia Sahlberg" <piabar@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 08:51:24 +0000

For recursive taps, I don't necessarily mean calling the same tap over and over, but potentially a different tap. The data collection and draw routines
could be combined in potentially novel ways...
    I recognize that a tap-listener can maintain its own tree, and all the
maintenance associated with it. I think that a recursive implementation is more
simplistic and less error prone.  It would be nice to allow a simplistic
recursive tap, with the option of a looping, non-recursive, tree-managing,
memory-managing version when somebody gets the time and inclination to do so. I
suggested the idea of recursion because I thought that it would be a simple
add-in with a little bit of consideration.
    Why stop at the simple re-creation of the summary window?  Why not go
further and start storing graphing information about each node? Recursion and
non-recursion is really a matter of preference.  I generally prefer
non-recursive implementations, but sometimes it's just easier and faster
(coding) to do recursive implementations...

I dont understand what the API or the semantics for such a tap system would look like so i dont understand what it could be used for and to what point.

I am probably wrong so please describe how it would work, on a technical level, what the flow would look like, what the API would look like and a dummy example, explaining how it would work better than the current system.


The current system fulfills all my current needs fine so I will not spend too much time implementing something I dont understand. Please feel free to try different extensions in the direction you want the tap system to move in, as long as the current simple API for simple stuff like rpcstat et al is not obfuscated or made more complicated I probably wont have any opinions. (well, unless i dont like it of course). You have the source, experiment.

The only thing I currently want from the tap system myself is an API that is very simple to use and that ethereal-newbie hackers can use to produce simple extensions such as FrameSizeHistograms and similar. Unfortunately no one has yet wanted to test/verify if the tap system works or not. (I dont consider it working properly according to my criterias until someone with little ethereal hacking experience successfully adds a new tap extension)

best regards
  ronnie sahlberg


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