On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 4:44 PM, Christian Convey <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> 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.
>    - Details regarding desired properties of C / C++ / Python / etc. code
>    generated from those layout descriptions.
>
> 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.
>
> So the idea is a bit like the dual of Google Protocol Buffers.  Both tools
> take a declarative description of message content, as the basis for
> generated code.  But in the tool I'm working on, the description specifies
> the wire-level layout
>
> It's actually something that's inspired from my work in databases, where
> it seems like the code describing the layout of disk pages is unnecessarily
> convoluted.  But I think Wireshark would probably make a more interesting
> test case for the tool, because (I assume) people develop new Wireshark
> dissectors a lot more often than databases develop new page layouts.
>
> I'd be grateful for any feedback / suggestions people have!
>

Ideas like this have been discussed before; for example in this thread:

https://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev/201207/msg00110.html

But I'm not sure much has ever come of them (beyond the existing projects
listed in the first email in the thread).
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