| -----Original Message-----
| From: Bryan Henderson
|
| Has anyone considered breaking ethereal into manageable pieces? In a
| number of ways, it is uncommonly big:
|
| - There are over a thousand files in the top level directory
| of the source
| tree (once built). I don't think I've ever seen the top
| level directory
| of anything this big.
I agree. How complex is it to update the CVS tree and the autoX files?
| - The executable is 6 MB, which is fairly normal for a major system
| component, but unusual for a diagnostic tool. I presume most
| of that is
| dissectors, and it's worth noting that any given instance of
| ethereal is
| unlikely to appreciate the vast majority of those. And to
| add or modify a
| dissector, you have to build and haul around that whole lump.
|
| - The man page (for ethereal and tethereal) is 60,000 lines.
| Virtually
| all of this is descriptions of fields.
|
| I think people would find ethereal easier to work with on lots of
| different levels if 1) the source tree directory structure
| were deepened a
| little; 2) the executable loaded dissectors dynamically as
| needed; and 3)
| the filter descriptions were in a separate file, or even a whole tree.
I have already an answer to point 3 in the form of a perl script:
http://home.tiscali.be/olivier.biot/ethereal/
http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200303/msg00191.html
I however did not generate NROFF output for man pages.
| I'm willing to work on doing this, but I thought it might
| have already
| been discussed and found undesirable.
