Re: Engine selection from command line

[Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:24:26AM +0100, Henri Doreau wrote:
> Hello,
>
> please find attached a patch that adds a --nsock-engine parameter to
> nmap, nping and ncat so that users can enforce use of a given nsock IO
> engine from command line. This is useful when developing new engines
> or for troubleshooting.
>
> I haven't documented the new parameter, since I think that it's mostly
> intended for developers and advanced users. I also don't provide any
> way to get the list of available engines, for the same reasons (no
> need to bloat the nsock API for this IMO).

Thanks Henri.  This sounds like a useful option for
testing/debugging/benchmarking and I think it is worth adding.

As for documentation, I agree that we shouldn't overdo it for an
obscure option like this.  We don't want to distract people from the
more commonly useful features.  But at the same time, it would be nice
to at least mention it somewhere in the Nmap man page so we don't
forget that we even have it.  Can you add it to docs/refguide.xml in
the performance section below the --defeat-rst-ratelimit option?  That
would be a good place to list the available engines too.  They don't
really change enough that keeping this up-to-date would be hard.  You
could add it to the nping and ncat man pages too, but I don't think
that is essential.

Cheers,
Fyodor
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