On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 16:48:26 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

> Yes, it isn't irrelevant and end users should of course express where it cause them head aches it it does.
>
> However, it does not affect adoption. I don't think high quality libraries will be held back from publication over a config format. Maybe some shitty ones with an uncertain lifespan (and good riddance for that).

I don't agree. It might really affect adoption. Mind you, people are easily put off, if things don't work out of the box, especially in the case of D. "Weird config format" would be one of those reasons / excuses not to use D. I bet you! It would certainly get mentioned in some tech article about D.


[snip]

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 16:53:35 UTC, Chris wrote:
> especially in the case of D. "Weird config format" would be one of those reasons / excuses not to use D. I bet you! It would certainly get mentioned in some tech article about D.

JSON falls into the same category.

Newbies want things to work out of the box, as in "make all" without errors. When you need to figure out a config format then you are already entrenched.

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 17:05:18 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 16:53:35 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> especially in the case of D. "Weird config format" would be one of those reasons / excuses not to use D. I bet you! It would certainly get mentioned in some tech article about D.
>
> JSON falls into the same category.
>
> Newbies want things to work out of the box, as in "make all" without errors. When you need to figure out a config format then you are already entrenched.

DUB works out of the box. dub init myproject.

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 17:51:40 UTC, Chris wrote:
> DUB works out of the box. dub init myproject.

Wasn't smack-talking DUB. Just pointing out that any type of modification of a config file is a turnoff for a newbie, no matter what format it is in.

(and for me and many others JSON would be a massive turn-off)

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:11:34 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 17:51:40 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> DUB works out of the box. dub init myproject.
>
> Wasn't smack-talking DUB. Just pointing out that any type of modification of a config file is a turnoff for a newbie, no matter what format it is in.
>
> (and for me and many others JSON would be a massive turn-off)

But JSON is widely used and chances are that people are already familiar with it. If not, it's easy to learn, there are loads of resources. 3rd party tools can easily parse it. And hey, it's not that bad. XML is a lot worse as regards human readability. However, I will for the life of me never understand why comments were not included.

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:27:57 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:11:34 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 17:51:40 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>> DUB works out of the box. dub init myproject.
>>
>> Wasn't smack-talking DUB. Just pointing out that any type of modification of a config file is a turnoff for a newbie, no matter what format it is in.
>>
>> (and for me and many others JSON would be a massive turn-off)
>
> But JSON is widely used and chances are that people are already familiar with it. If not, it's easy to learn, there are loads of resources. 3rd party tools can easily parse it. And hey, it's not that bad. XML is a lot worse as regards human readability. However, I will for the life of me never understand why comments were not included.

json is not a configuration file format

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:31:19 UTC, rsw0x wrote:
> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:27:57 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:11:34 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> But JSON is widely used and chances are that people are already familiar with it. If not, it's easy to learn, there are loads of resources. 3rd party tools can easily parse it. And hey, it's not that bad. XML is a lot worse as regards human readability. However, I will for the life of me never understand why comments were not included.
>
> json is not a configuration file format

It's a data exchange format, and it can be used for many purposes.

On Friday, 27 November 2015 at 18:27:57 UTC, Chris wrote:
> But JSON is widely used and chances are that people are already familiar with it. If not, it's easy to learn, there are loads of resources. 3rd party tools can easily parse it. And hey, it's not that bad.

Well, many are familiar with JSON, and I use it all the time, but it is not a good or readable format. It is just something browsers have builtin, that's the only thing it has going for it.

> XML is a lot worse as regards human readability.

I think not. It is all about familiarity and if the grammar has been designed for it. I find my own XML _much_ more readable than JSON. And much easier to eXtend.

If you use a decent XML editor and have a schema for the grammar then you get a really nice generic editing solution with auto-completion.

Here is one very real advantage of XML: the ability to embed standard markup in descriptions and use one "container format" for all future non-D data.

I think the animosity against XML is misguided.

But if XML is out, then YAML is a good expressive alternative (that can be translated into XML, so you can use both if you want to).

JSON is very limiting and not a future proof solution. People who pick JSON for configuration, probably also pick Php for their website. ;^)

On 2015-11-27 08:55, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

> That would mean more work for everyone and consequently less adoption.

How so? It's the same amount of commands, maybe one extra.

> Seriously, I think it's the best approach possible and really couldn't
> imagine using a more manual system to the extend that I do now. But more
> importantly, it would mean that we have a problem with cross-platform
> packages. You can't expect everyone to be able to build for all
> platforms. But if they don't, you can't know the dependencies or
> whatever else for those other platforms, even if the code would in
> theory compile fine.

The packages don't need to contain compiled binaries. It could still be source distribution.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 2015-11-25 11:17, 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.

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

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg