[Wireshark-dev] Wireshark PIDL generated dissectors

[Guy Harris]

On Oct 7, 2013, at 2:40 PM, Joerg Mayer <jmayer at loplof.de> wrote:

> If I understand it correctly, he is talking about the backend:

Meaning "PIDL, the tool...".

I think it'd be a mistake to fork PIDL-the-language (or the protocol descriptions written in PIDL-the-language) unless there are some places where correct dissection, or sufficiently complete dissection for Wireshark's purposes, or some useful new Wireshark feature, requires a *language* change rather than, say, a specific-to-Wireshark conformance file.  Forking the language or the protocol descriptions would make it more difficult to pick up Samba's improvements to the PIDL descriptions.

If there's a reasonably standard interface into which backends plug, so that the Samba team can maintain the front end and we can maintain the Wireshark back end, then I think it would make sense for the Wireshark team to be the ones who maintain the Wireshark backend, so that we can adapt it to our needs without having to involve the Samba team (unless the interface between the front and back ends needs to change for either Samba reasons or Wireshark reasons; hopefully that won't happen very often if at all).