Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] H.245 requesting help

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2003 18:37:49 -0700
On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 12:50:34PM +0200, andreas.sikkema@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> My own goal is to create a real Ethereal ASN compiler, but that might 
> take some while.

A compiler to generate dissectors from ASN.1 would probably be useful. 
(Arguably, so might compilers to generate dissectors from rpcgen
language for ONC RPC and the IDL for DCE RPC.)

Another ASN.1 translator that might be useful would be one that was part
of Ethereal itself and that knew enough ASN.1 to read SNMP MIB files
*AND* COPS-PR PIB files and turn them into data structures that can be
used to interpret SNMP and COPS messages.

That might eliminate some problems we have with UCD SNMP/NET-SNMP (hangs
or crashes in NET-SNMP when it loads some MIB files other than its own,
pain trying to get the right additional libraries linked in - libraries
not needed for the stuff *we* use those libraries for) without some of
the issues I've seen with libsmi (slow loading of MIBs, not loading the
right MIBs - or any MIBs? - by default).

It might also let us get rid of the hacks in the COPS dissector where it
has some OIDs hardwired into it, so as to print some values differently.

SNACC might be a good starting point for this:

	http://www.fokus.gmd.de/ovma/freeware/snacc/entry.html

as it's GPL code.