Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] Re: [distcc] [patch] distcc dissector for ethereal

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On  9 Mar 2003, Brad Hards <bhards@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 22:15, Martin Pool wrote:
> > To get through the lists.samba.org sheep dip you may need to make sure
> > its mime-type is set to text/plain.
> Grrr. My gui mailer (KMail) makes that a bit tricky.
> Anyway, it got through on the list that was most critical:
> http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200303/msg00112.html

That seems to work well.

A couple of matters of terminology:

Please call it "distcc distributed compiler", not the generic
"Distributed Compiler System", which seems to be the name of some
older system.

Perhaps you could use the word "magic" a bit less?  It's magic, but
not that magic. :-) (Or is this special jargon for Ethereal?)

I think the dissection could reasonably be a bit shorter, and perhaps
also split into a tree.  Something like

  distcc request
    compilation request (version 1)
    arguments (19): gcc-3.2 -c foo.i -o foo.o -Wall
      argument 0: "gcc-3.2" (7 bytes)
        ...
    input file (71232 bytes)
      
Perhaps it would be good to explain fields more in terms of what they
mean, rather than the tags used in the protocol.  So, "input file" or
"preprocessed source" rather than "DOTI data", "stderr messages"
rather than "SERR", etc.  Ethereal seems to get a pretty good balance
here with other protocols.

You could decode the STAT result as a waitstatus. 

In the summary line packet list I think the best thing to show for the
request is the whole compiler command line; for the response probably
the decoded status and perhaps the error messages.

It's still pretty useful as it is; these suggestions are just in case
you feel like polishing it a bit more.

Thanks to all the Ethereal developers; it's a great tool.

-- 
Martin