Out of curiosity, which one do you use in your dub projects and why do you prefer one over another?

For example, I use json. Simply because when I see sdl, I think of SDL2 graphics library.

What's your reason?

On Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 10:19:18 UTC, Ki Rill wrote:

Json because it's a consistent format across environments outside of D, unlike sdl which is basically only used by D and only by dub really.

On Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 10:19:18 UTC, Ki Rill wrote:

Reason to prefer JSON:

1. dub is stricter about the format, and will complain about errors for SDL would result in values being silently ignored.

2. you want something like a 2008 Perl install to be able to do something with your dub.json files, instead of writing a D program.

3. you hope that a glacier of increasing dub.json files will eventually tear out the roots of dub having more than one config format

4. you have a phobia about malicious comments getting injected into your dub.sdl files

5. you used jq and liked it to the point of finding other formats intolerable

Reasons to prefer SDL:

1. comments in dub.sdl files,

#! /usr/bin/env dub
/+ dub.json: {
   "dependencies": {
       "sumtype": "~>0.10.0",
    },
    "dflags": ["-betterC"],
}
+/

vs.

#! /usr/bin/env dub
/+ dub.sdl:
   dependency "sumtype" version="~>0.10.0"
   dflags "-betterC"
+/

dub converts SDL to JSON for ~/.packages/ , and the same code might be used to convert SDL documentation to JSON, so I think the main problem of multiple dub configuration formats (that it's more of a chore to talk about dub configuration) is not that bad.

With JSON you do not have to remember what an array or a hash looks like, but that doesn't tell you that the "dflags" key has an array of strings rather than looking like "dflags": "-betterC",

You have to look up what dub expects either way, so the consistency fails to help with the most frustrating part of dub configurations, which is writing them in the first place.

On Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 10:19:18 UTC, Ki Rill wrote:

SDL. It's much cleaner to me than JSON. And the fact that JSON is standard elsewhere matters not one iota to me.

On 9/22/21 6:19 AM, Ki Rill wrote:

I actually used to prefer sdl, but lately, I'm using json.

sdl is an ok format to write, but I always forget the way to write arrays or objects. With json I always know what I need to use.

I prefer a comment-allowing form, especially for config files, where comments can provide instructions on what directives do. Having dub init spit out a bunch of comments that describe how to configure dub, and how to add dependencies, configs, etc, would go a long way to making it not as bad a format.

-Steve

On Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 13:22:33 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

What do you think of Rust's toml format?

On Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 14:15:43 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

I wish json would accept comments. I prefer to leave lots of comments for future me in case I forget what I did, important information about a package, etc...

On Wednesday, 22 September 2021 at 10:45:41 UTC, bauss wrote:

I use it on the job (not a D shop).