Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] tools/check[hf|APIs|filtername].pl need updating?

From: Jakub Zawadzki <darkjames-ws@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2018 18:04:55 +0200
Hi,

W dniu 2018-09-18 16:56, Maynard, Chris napisał(a):
While investigating the transum-related crash, I had suspected some
unregistered hf's and ran the various tools like checkhf.pl.  I then
noticed that a number of dissectors seemed to have changed a bit from
what I was used to before (...)

These changes are quite old. For udp I did it in Aug 2013 (88eaebaedf2e19c493ea696f633463e4f2a9a757).

some wireshark-dev threads:
 - https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201307/msg00222.html
- thread continuation: https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201308/msg00035.html

Nobody stopped me that time.

And I guess I missed the reasoning behind the restructuring, but what
is the purpose/benefit of this restructuring

To sum up:

Restructuring idea was to remove usage of int hf_foo, so you would need only to declare header_field_info hfi_foo (unfortunate, you still need to do it on top of file).

Benefit is no more ints, so:
 - proto_tree_ api checks if you passed header_field_info structure,
- You don't need to declare int hf_foo = -1; (bonus: binary size smaller 4 bytes per hf),
 - no need for table lookup in proto_tree_add_*

and use of HAVE_HFI_SECTION_INIT?

Idea was that HFI_INIT(proto_bar) would put all protocol hfi's into single binary section. This way wireshark could auto-register these fields without need of some indirect array (bonus: binary size smaller by sizeof(void *) per hfi).


After 5 years simple grep shows that only 36 dissectors are using NEW_PROTO_TREE_API, so it seems that this API is not well known or not liked.
If it makes problem I would suggest to drop it.

Alexis suggested the same in 2015: https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201508/msg00087.html


Jakub.