Ulf,
Unfortunately I am not the one designing the protocols I am writing dissectors for. Protocol does not carry versioning info, so it is the user who has to make a choice of what protocol version needed before Ethereal start.
Thanks,
Alex
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ulf Lamping
> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004 1:45 PM
> To: Ethereal development
> Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Ethereal plugin versioning question
>
>
> Filonenko Alexander-AAF013 wrote:
>
> > All,
> >
> > Our users test/troubleshoot a proprietary system. The system gets
> > updated periodically and part of the update are protocol changes.
> > Since several versions of the system coexist we maintain multiple
> > plugin versions of same protocol. Changes from version to
> version are
> > usually not significant. It is desirable that dissector's
> protocol id
> > does not change from version to version to allow finding
> dissector by
> > name, this way other dissectors will not be affected if they use
> > find_dissector. Since users often share equipment to
> monitor different
> > releases of the system, different plugin sets matching
> version of the
> > system must be be installed on the same computer at the
> same time. I
> > can see several options of how this can be accomplished.
> >
>
> If you design a protocol and do changes to it, it's a good idea to
> include some versioning into the procols data. This will prevent
> yourself from searching such protocol versioning conflicts.
> Believe me,
> searching for a networking bug and recognizing it's simply because of
> two devices with different protocol versions, really sucks. I
> had that
> problem before :-(
>
> If such infos are in the protocols data, you can implement
> something in
> Ethereal to try to detect the different version from the
> received data,
> not requiring such plugin hacks.
>
> I do understand, that you might not be able to change the protocol
> implementation yourself, so my tipps might be pretty useless
> to you case.
>
> Regards, ULFL
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ethereal-dev mailing list
> Ethereal-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.ethereal.com/mailman/listinfo/ethereal-dev
>