Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] newbie question about dissection specifications

[Graham Bloice <graham.bloice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 31 May 2016 at 23:21, Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 30, 2016, at 1:44 PM, Christian Convey <christian.convey@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I'm starting a side project, and I was wondering if it might eventually be something useful to Wireshark developers.  Anyone mind weighing in?
>
> It's a translator that does this:
> Input:
>       • A declarative description of wire-level message layouts.

Note that there exists a third-party Wireshark plugin declarative description language that translates a packet description into interpreted code and interprets it:

        http://wsgd.free.fr

You might want to look at the language they're using, although it sounds as if:

> Output:
>       • Generated C / C++ / Python / etc. code based on those layout descriptions.  For example:
>               • Pretty-printing
>               • C++ classes for accessing individual fields safely, including endian-ness correction.
>               • C structs / unions / bit-fields for unchecked access to buffers supposedly having those formats.
>               • C++ functions that create an appropriate Wireshark dissector.
>               • Etc.

...your work is intended for more purposes than just Wireshark dissection, such as protocol implementations, so it might have different requirements.

Isn't the ability to produce protocol implementations one of the "features" of ASN.1?

--

Graham Bloice