[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Vinay Sajip]

Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Tarek Ziadé <tarek <at> ziade.org> wrote:
> > On 6/22/12 7:05 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> > I don't understand what's the problem is with ini-style files, as they are
> > suitable for multi-line variables etc. (see zc.buildout)
> >
> > yaml vs ini vs xxx seems to be an implementation detail, and my take on this
> > is that we have ConfigParser in the stdlib
> 
> You can't do more than one layer of nested data structures cleanly
> with an ini-style solution, and some aspects of packaging are just
> crying out for metadata that nests more deeply than that. The
> setup.cfg format for specifying installation layouts doesn't even come
> *close* to being intuitively readable - using a format with better
> nesting support has some hope of fixing that, since filesystem layouts
> are naturally hierarchical.
> 
> A JSON based format would also be acceptable to me from a functional
> point of view, although in that case, asking people to edit it
> directly would be cruel - you would want to transform it to YAML in
> order to actually read it or write it.

The format-neutral alternative I used for logging configuration was a dictionary
schema - JSON, YAML and Python code can all be mapped to that. Perhaps the
relevant APIs can work at the dict layer.

I agree that YAML is the human-friendliest "one obvious" format for review/edit,
though.

+1 to the overall approach suggested, it makes a lot of sense. Simple is better
than complex, and all that :-)

Regards,

Vinay Sajip