Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] RFD: Creating subdirectories in epan/dissectors/

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

Having re-read the entire thread, I've gathered the following list of
objections. I think it covers all of the concerns mentioned so far (in
no particular order):

1 potential for file-name collisions
2 increased difficulty in using tab-completion
3 potential for less parallel make
4 more complicated to search dissector source
5 concern that the number of folders would scale as poorly as the
number of files
6 concern that it wouldn't actually provide any benefit

1 and 2 are only issues with the original, rough draft of the naming
scheme. The refined naming scheme proposed later in the thread does
not have either issue.

3 is only an issue if we write the makefiles wrong. Now that
somebody's mentioned it, hopefully we wouldn't make that mistake :)

4 is valid, but minor. I would hope that most developers use a tool
like ctags, cscope, or similar to index the code. All of those tools
will work regardless of how the source is layed out. Manual greps will
be more complicated, but if you have to run a manual grep on a
codebase the size of Wireshark's then I think there's already
something wrong.

5 is reason to be conservative in our use of folders, but not reason
to discard the idea. As long as we limit folders to groups with a
large number of files (10+? more?) then they'll still provide a
benefit. 1000 folders is way too many, but it's still better than
15000 files!

6 I'm not clear on, since the benefits seem so obvious to me. Perhaps
I've just done a poor job of explaining. I simply feel that
epan/dissectors/packet-bluetooth/ would be a good thing for the same
reason that epan/dissectors/ is a good thing: it provides additional
logical structure that turns a list (inefficient) into a tree
(efficient). If people are more in favour of using patterned names
like packet-bluetooth-* to denote that structure, then why do we use
folders at all? As Jeff pointed out, we moved all the dissectors
together into epan/dissectors/ for a reason. That reason still applies
here.

At this point I feel that I've said everything I can possibly say on
the subject. If people are still generally against the idea then so be
it, but I'm not going to argue the point anymore.

All the best,
Evan