Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] use g_hook mechanism in file.c, instead of directly calling menu, statusbar and alike

[Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>]

Hi!

While looking at the file.c, I repeatedly ask myself two question:

1.) why do we have separate code for Ethereal and Tethereal for file and 
capturing things?
2.) why is file.c reponsible to update the menus, statusbar and such?

Well, first of all I would think that 2.) is the main reason for 1.) as 
Tethereal doesn't have menus and such.

So let's look at 2.)

I would think, it's not the responsibility of file.c to update menus and 
all that (it shouldn't even have to know about it). I would like to 
provide a (or some?) hooks in the file.c code, so the user of it could 
add a hook and will be called when a specific point is reached.

Example: Currently, if a capture file is closed, cf_close will call a 
bunch of set_menus_for_... functions and a lot more of that kind. Well, 
that's ugly in my eyes.

It should simply call a hook to spread a "CAPTURE FILE CLOSED" message 
(or alike), and the user is responsible to do whatever has to be done.

This way, we could come to a file component, which can be used by 
different users like Ethereal, Tethereal, ... without modifications to 
the component itself and that way we could eliminate the current 
"interesting" duplication of file and capture code in tethereal.

To implement this, we could use the GLib's g_hook mechanism.

What do other's think?

Regards, ULFL