On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 22:18:28 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> "With a standard json parser in Phobos, zip zap boom you're done. You don't have to design it, argue about it, build it, document it, debug it, test it, optimize it, explain it, deal with bug requests, deal with enhancement requests, deal with legacy compatibility, build a converter, build a gui tool for it, etc."

But surly the D standard libray needs support for XML, YAML and other widespread formats too, so you would want the most suitable format rather than the most limited one?

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 16:23:46 UTC, Gordon wrote:
> [snip]

Please no personal attacks on these forums. Keep it civil.

On Thursday, 26 November 2015 at 08:47:41 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> Mar. 09, 2013: First call for comments for a new package format
> http://forum.rejectedsoftware.com/groups/rejectedsoftware.dub/thread/2/
>
> May 24, 2013: Concrete DUB enhancement proposal (DEP)
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dub/wiki/DEP1
>
> Jun. 12, 2013: Request for creating code.dlang.org
>
> Sep. 26, 2013: Sub discussion about the choice of a JSON alternative in the "dub: should we make it the de jure package manager for D?" thread, started by you
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/tuvtennjkvfnnyxmohzx@forum.dlang.org
>
> Jun. 17, 2014: Opened a ticket for adding SDLang support (1.0.0 milestone)
>
> Aug. 08, 2014: Initial implementation as a PR
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dub/pull/392
>
> Sep. 22, 2014: Announcement of 0.9.22 and official status of DUB
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/lvoqdv$2m78$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Jun. 17, 2015: Announcement of the first beta version with SDLang support
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/mlr7g5$ss1$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Jul. 02, 2015: Announcement of the second beta
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/mn47ih$2cp1$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Jul. 13, 2015: Announcement of the first release candidate
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/mo1gga$1dn5$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Sep. 14, 2015: Announcement of the final release candidate
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/mt6c09$2n33$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Sep. 20, 2015: Announcement of the final release
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/mtn1rd$2fa5$1@digitalmars.com
>
> Nov. 25, 2015: This thread

This really puts things in perspective.

What I got from this thread is that the only things worth worrying about are:

1. code.dlang.org presents dub configuration snippets in a format that doesn't match dub's default configuration format

2. dub could use a way to specify the default configuration format.

IMHO what would also be great is make the default dub.sdl larger, with comments explaining options, and commented-out examples of other common options. This should make trips to dub's package format's and SDL's reference necessary much less often.

On Saturday, 28 November 2015 at 02:01:36 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 16:23:46 UTC, Gordon wrote:
>> [snip]
>
> Please no personal attacks on these forums. Keep it civil.

Why not tell that to Dicebot? He spends half his time being a drama queen and spends the other half attacking other people.

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:17:02 UTC, Suliman wrote:
> If SDL will stay by default I will prefer to move to any other build system or will downgrade to old version of DUB.

JSON +1

On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 12:48:51 +0000, Kagamin wrote:

> On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 12:43:01 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> What about JSON with comments? You could always strip them. But I admit that JSON becomes a bit messy after a while. It's not ideal. As I said, nothing against SDL as long as we can have a conversion tool.
> 
> There's no json5 D parser?

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15303

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:17:02 UTC, Suliman wrote:
> I think that using SDL format was big mistake. Not only I do not want to spend time in learning yet another dead config format that now use only one project -- DUB. In time when DUB used json it was not perfect, but at last it was standard and everybody can read it.
>
> Now when I come to code.dlang.org I can't simply do copy-past of dependence. I need go to docs page, and read how to include it.
>
> Also I do not see any projects that are migrate to SDL. Everybody continue to use JSON. So please, return JSON back as default, or very soon we will see that nobody do not submit packages to code.dlang.org and nobody do not use DUB for their own projects.
>
> Please vote about SDL config format http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=565587f4e4b0b3955a59fb67
>
> If SDL will stay by default I will prefer to move to any other build system or will downgrade to old version of DUB.

To be honest, the use of json for *config* has always stumped me. This may be a very minor thing, but I don't want to refer to my settings as strings. "version" is not version. Even xml doesn't do that.

Because of the above, when the new DUB came with a new config format, I just said "finally!".

I hope you stick with it, or at least with a sane config format.

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 19:29:48 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> Just throwing it out there: CSON [1]. "CoffeeScript-Object-Notation. Same as JSON but for CoffeeScript objects". It's used by the Atom editor.
>
> [1] https://github.com/bevry/cson

Hmm. Pretty, standardized, similar to JSON. I like it!

...but we don't have a parser yet, do we? That might be an obstacle.

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 19:42:43 UTC, Chris wrote:
> I'm sure that we would have a similar discussion, if we had YAML, XML, TOML or whatever. It doesn't really matter. But what does matter is that we use a well known standardized format.

Then XML is clear winner, its support, spread, availability and tooling is unmatched.

On Saturday, 28 November 2015 at 18:13:51 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> Then XML is clear winner, its support, spread, availability and tooling is unmatched.

So is its complexity. ;)

Do we even have a good standard XML parser? std.xml has been languishing for years...