[Discuss] Application config files

[gaf at gapps.blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

For the most part I don't. The only section that is not settable in the app
is exclude files. So human readability will no longer be that important.

On Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 6:11 PM Rich Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 16:16:15 -0500
> Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> wrote:
>
> > I largely disagree.  If it's currently in INI format the equivalent
> > JSON should generally be perfectly human-readable, e.g.:
>
> Computer-generated JSON can be human-readable. Doesn't mean it will be.
> Often enough it is not. Very not. For example, my Calibre metadata
> sources cache is 174KB dumped into 24 lines of text one of which is the
> open brace and another is the close brace. That's 22 lines of
> unreadable, computer-generated JSON. Admittedly that cache isn't
> easily stored in simple key/value pairs because it's not simple
> key/value data like your example. Use JSON if you need to store complex
> data. Otherwise I suggest avoiding it.
>
> Avoid YAML. It's great for Ansible because Ansible has test modes so
> you can verify that the code acutally does what it's supposed to do
> before it wrecks things. Unless you're exposing your configuration
> parser for external testing then YAML should be taken off the table.
>
> INI and TOML are basic key/value stores. They are easily read and
> modified by humans and there are parsers available in pretty much any
> language you care to use (they're also not difficult to write if you
> have an exception). If you need human readability (and optionally human
> writability) then either INI or TOML are good choices to consider.
>
> --
> Rich Pieri
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