idl2eth

IDL2ETH(1)               The Ethereal Network Analyzer              IDL2ETH(1)



NAME
       idl2eth - CORBA IDL to Ethereal Plugin Generator

SYNOPSYS
       idl2eth filename

DESCRIPTION
       idl2eth is a program that takes a user specified CORBA IDL file and
       generates "C" source code for an Ethereal "plugin".

       This resulting file can be compiled as an Ethereal plugin, and used to
       monitor GIOP/IIOP traffic that is using this IDL.

       idl2eth is actually a shell script wrapper for two Python programs.

       These programs are:

           ethereal_be.py  - Contains the main IDL Visitor Class

           ethereal_gen.py - Contains the Source Code Generator Class

       idl2eth supports heuristic dissection of GIOP/IIOP traffic, and some
       experimental code for explicit dissection, based on Object Key <->
       Repository Id mapping.  However, code for heuristic based plugins is
       generated by default, and users should consider this the preferred
       method unless you have some namespace collisions.

OPTIONS
       Currently there are no options. idl2eth can be invoked as follows.

       1.  To write the C code to stdout.

           idl2eth  <your_file.idl>

           eg: idl2eth echo.idl

       2. To write to a file, just redirect the output.

           idl2eth echo.idl > packet-test.c

ENVIRONMENT
       idl2eth will look for ethereal_be.py and ethereal_gen.py in $PYTHON-
       PATH/site-packages/ and if not found, will try the current directory ./

       The -p option passed to omniidl (inside idl2eth) indicates where ethe-
       real_be.py and ethereal_gen.py will be searched.  This may need tweak-
       ing if you place these files somewhere else.

       If it complains about being unable to find some modules (eg temp-
       file.py), you may want to check if PYTHONPATH is set correctly.

       eg:  PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python1.5/

SEE ALSO
       ethereal(1)

NOTES
       idl2eth (including ethereal_be.py and ethereal_gen.py) are part of the
       Ethereal distribution.  The latest version of Ethereal can be found at
       http://www.ethereal.com.

       idl2eth uses omniidl, and IDL parser, and can be found at
       http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/

TODO
       Some of the more important things to do are:

       o Improve Explicit dissection code.
       o Improve command line options.
       o Improve decode algorithm when we have operation name collision.

AUTHORS
         Original Author
         -------- ------
         Frank Singleton             <frank.singleton[AT]ericsson.com>

         Contributors
         ------------



0.10.13                           2005-10-10                        IDL2ETH(1)