Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] ISO 8583-1 Dissector

From: Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 13:13:33 -0500

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 12:50 PM, Paulo Roberto <betobrandao@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello,

I developed an initial version of an ISO 8583-1 financial message standard dissector. And as my first possible contribution I have some doubts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8583

I followed all instructions in the file README.dissectors to prepare my code for a future commit on the Wireshark tree (fuzz test, perl and bash check scripts, etc). I would like to know what else I should do before to push my code as instructed in this file. Is that ok to push a dissector not full featured and that support only some versions of the standard yet?

Yes, it's certainly possible (and, in fact, quite common) to push not-fully-complete dissectors to Wireshark.  If you want an example (with statistics, even), see the description of the status of the OpenFlow dissector:

If your dissector already passes all the test/check scripts and it's useful to at least some people then it's reasonable to commit it.

I also wrote a wiki page available at http://www.inf.ufes.br/~beto/blog/iso-8583-1-wireshark-dissector that I intend to port to the Wireshark Wiki if allowed by you and keep updated.

In fact it's a good idea to start a Wireshark wik page around the same time as starting the push process.  That way there's a place/links to sample captures and a human description of what the dissector does.  Feel free to start now--anybody can modify the wiki (once they have an account anyway).