On Jul 19, 2019, at 11:41 AM, phreakocious <phreakocious@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello, as mentioned in the subject, these menu options are disabled in the packet list. My (probably flawed) muscle memory insists that it worked at some point. The other columns work fine so it seems to be intentional.
Never attribute to intent that which can be explained by "whoops, I guess that doesn't work, maybe we need to do that differently". Copy -> As Filter in the Protocol column is disabled in a recent master build if you've just read in a file, but if I go to the packet details pane, select a field, use Copy -> As Filter on that field, and then go back to the Protocol column, it's re-enabled - it still doesn't *work*, but it's re-enabled.
This code needs some work, both for the enabling and for the "still doesn't work".
The former may be due to the filter-related menu actions being "shared" between the packet list and packet detail panes, which they probably shouldn't be, given that they're *not the same actions* - the packet list ones deal with filters for *columns*, the packet details ones deal with filters for *fields*.
The latter appears to be due to the fact that we simply don't *set* a filter expression for the Protocol column, and may never have done so (so your muscle memory may, indeed, be flawed). That column is currently just set as text by dissectors; we'd have to add a separate API for setting the protocol column, allowing the column filter to be set, and change the dissectors to use that.
> My gut says it's due to inconsistent/unintuitive behavior in cases like an ACK, where filtering by protocol would result in all TCP.
That's only inconsistent or unintuitive to people who somehow think that popping up a context window on a column that says "TCP" should do anything other than apply a display filter of "tcp".
> This is a bit annoying, but debatably less so than the back and forth movement to the details view to filter simpler things like ARP, DHCP, (M)DNS, etc.
>
> Given that it's probably just as hard to whitelist the simple protocols as to blacklist the complex ones, maybe it could just be a global option to enable that function for all protocols?
Or maybe it has nothing to do with deliberate disabling for the Protocol column, but has to do with
1) bogosity in the UI code causing the enabled status in the packet list pane tracking the enabled status in the packet details pane
and
2) not having written the necessary mechanisms to add a filter expression for the Protocol column (which isn't necessarily the result of a deliberate decision that it *shouldn't* support a column filter).
Please file a bug on the "disabled in the packet list" part, so we can get that fixed first; that's just a bug. Then we can file a separate enhancement to allow filtering on the Protocol column.