Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] new style dissectors (Was: Source code for ACN (ANSI BSR E1.17) Dissector)

From: Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:54:57 +0800

Joerg Mayer wrote:

On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 06:00:00PM +0800, Jeff Morriss wrote:

I did this once a while ago and found figuring out how to actually make a dissector into a "new style" dissector wasn't all that easy, mainly because I couldn't find which (of the hundreds) of dissectors did it already so I didn't know where to look for an example and the README.developer didn't contain any info about it.

I started to write a readme for that once and abandoned it, because
while new-style dissectors are a good idea - the way it was done has
some room for improvements.

But what we are left with is a situation where every newcomer who writes a new dissector on TCP is immediately asked to convert it to a "new style" dissector without any documentation as to how... Not very encouraging to those people.

BTW, I was about to ask what's wrong with the current system when I saw this message which I suppose outlines most of it:

http://www.wireshark.org/lists/ethereal-dev/200512/msg03512.html