Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Dynamic arrays in proto_register_field_array and proto_register_subtree_array

[Stefano Pettini <spettini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

LEGO wrote:

> My experience with mate tells me that you cannot do that. Not at
> runtime. I lost days trying to figure out that It could not be done.

Here's the problem.

Reliable Multicast Transport (RMT) IETF working group has defined two 
transport protocols: ALC and NORM. Since reliable multicast is a complex 
field, not every protocol, algorithm or idea is useful to solve a every 
problem.

So, RMT wg decided to ratify "pluggable" protocols, composed of many 
"building blocks". There are RFCs for transport format, encoding, error 
correction, and congestion control algorithms. A protocol, or Protocol 
Instantiation, like ALC and NORM, is composed of many building blocks.

This is why I want to generate etts and hfs array dynamically. I'm 
writing "subdissectors" for many building blocks, plus two dissectors 
for ALC and NORM that call the others. Please note that protocols are 
composed, not stacked. ALC dissector should import etts and hfs of its 
building blocks.

This could be resolved as runtime. Since this kind of aggregation is 
easily predictable (ALC is always composed of the same building blocks), 
I'm also thinking about how to generate the right arrays at compile 
time, using preprocessing macros.

Any other idea?

Thanks.

Stefano