[Distutils] comparison of configuration languages

Alex Grönholm alex.gronholm at nextday.fi
Tue May 10 03:38:51 EDT 2016


A few facts:

  * YAML is good enough for Salt, Ansible and numerous other common tools
  * The YAML standard has been stable for many years, unlike TOML which
    still hasn't even reached 1.0
  * YAML has widespread tooling support, unlike TOML

We all agree that JSON is not the solution. No comments, trailing commas 
etc.
TOML isn't much better than ConfigParser in terms of representing nested 
structures.
So far the ONLY objective problems with YAML seems to be the problematic 
implementation named PyYAML. If this is really the case, I'd gladly help 
build a better one just to prevent TOML from being chosen for this task. 
That we're even /considering/ building something as important as this on 
an unstable standard is pretty horrifying to me in itself.

10.05.2016, 06:37, Chris Barker kirjoitti:
> Really?
>
> writing Yet Another Markup Language (YAML :-) ) CAN'T be the simplest, 
> best option.
>
> > After further consideration, and pytoml's author's comment about the 
> spec changing without a version increase, I think we might be better 
> off rolling our own.
>
>
>     I like the general simplicity, and would stick with that, but I'd
>     be a lot more comfortable if we had our spec that was more consistent.
>
>
> If we're going to do that, then why not the 'simple part of yaml'.
>
> or Python literals. (if I recall, the main reason not to do that was 
> that no other language has a lib to read it -- rolling out own does 
> not solve that!)
>
> Or just go with JSON -- I'm annoyed by it at times, but it's not SO bad.
>
> (and you can kinda-sorta simulate comments with useless keys :-)
>
> { "comment": "this is just something i wanted to say here",
> ...
> }
>
> or we could do "JSON with comments" -- not hard to write a tiny 
> pre-processor before passing it off to the json lib.
>
> Anyway -- let's avoid the temptation to role your own everything, and 
> use something standard!
>
> -CHB
>
> -- 
>
> Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
> Oceanographer
>
> Emergency Response Division
> NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
> 7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
> Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception
>
> Chris.Barker at noaa.gov <mailto:Chris.Barker at noaa.gov>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/attachments/20160510/dacced4a/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Distutils-SIG mailing list