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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Specifying dissectors declaratively

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2017 11:51:50 -0700
On Apr 19, 2017, at 5:46 AM, Alexander Adolf <alexander.adolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have used ASN.1 in projects, and I would fully support Pascal's recommendation that it doesn't seem the best choice for Wireshark.

It's the best choice for protocols specified in ASN.1 and using BER or PER.

Unless we add ECN support, it's not the best choice for protocols not using BER or PER.

With ECN, it's still not the best choice for protocols specified in some other language (rpcgen, one of the DCE RPC IDLs, CORBA IDL, the xcb language, etc.), unless you have a translator that turns those languages into ASN.1 and ECN specifications (doing that by hand would be silly).

It might also not be the best choice for protocols not specified in some form of protocol definition language.