Re: AI12-0218: What is the portable representation clause for processing IETF packets on little-endian machines?

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Thursday, May 10, 2018 at 2:34:39 PM UTC-5, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> Representation clauses are useless for network protocols and 
> serialization

Serialization?  LoL!!  Streamed field-by-field (even textual?) serialization like OO designs do?  Hahahaha.  That is not even on-topic at all regarding fixed-header binary packet layouts in this thread.  When the Dmitry Engineering Task Force (DETF) designs the Dmitrynet protocol stack to replace the Internet protocol stack at & near layer 3, you can rework all of IETF's fixed packet-header binary layouts to be your ‘serialization’.  But until then, we're not tilting at windmills; we live in IETF's reality of their packet-header formats.  Now show how to process them portably in Ada without AI12-0218.

>, for multiple reasons. I never used them in any of the 
> protocol implementations I wrote.

LoL!!  Oh, do tell why a representation clause on an IETF packet's header layout is “useless”.  (For decades and decades, IETF intentionally designs its packet headers to be typecasted as meticulously-laid-out C structs.)

> The only place representation clauses could have is mapping special 
> machine registers, which naturally excludes any questions of portability.

LoL!!  Oh, so an IC manufacturer doesn't want to sell their chips to both big-endian and little-endian accounts?  Or is it that the IC manufacturer wants to write entirely different source code for different processors?  Or is it that the IC manufacturer never provides the source code to a reference-implementation device driver to their customers at all?  Job security by elimination of all portability of software; write a fresh variant for every target, even if they differ only slightly.