From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Eric Raymond Subject: Re: More git status --porcelain lossage Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:41:54 -0400 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Message-ID: <20100410194154.GB28768@thyrsus.com> References: <20100409190601.47B37475FEF@snark.thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Simon , Eric Raymond , git@vger.kernel.org To: Jakub Narebski X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Sat Apr 10 21:42:06 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O0gZ7-0001Ha-KL for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:42:02 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751916Ab0DJTl4 (ORCPT ); Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:41:56 -0400 Received: from static-71-162-243-5.phlapa.fios.verizon.net ([71.162.243.5]:60191 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751692Ab0DJTlz (ORCPT ); Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:41:55 -0400 Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 23) id 10D3920CBBC; Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:41:54 -0400 (EDT) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Jakub Narebski : > Are out of your f**g mind? XML, really? XML might be good choice to > *define* _document_ formats, but is really poor data exchange / > serialization format (being overly verbose, among others). Also, XML > is not language but meta-language. Agreed. > I could understand providing JSON format, specified using --json > option. You know, that's actually an interesting idea. I mentioned it previously as the not-XML if we want to build on a metaprotocol; I wasn't considering it seriously then. But I am now, and it is not without attractions. JSON would certainly solve all the delimiter and empty-object edge cases, and it has excellent extensibility. > I think there is some GPLv2 compatibile JSON generating code > in C (MIT licensed code is GPLv2 compatibilie, isn't it?); we can > always borrow compact JSON generation code from GPSD project (if > license allows it) from ESR. My license would allow it, but there's not really a lot of win in trying to reuse JSON generator code - writing your own printfs for it by hand is easy and fast. Emacs Lisp has a JSON parser, so it would meet my needs. Alternatively, a cleaned-up --porcelain -Z along the lines previously suggested would be good. Supplying both might not be a bad idea. The volume of code involved would be low. -- Eric S. Raymond