Hello:
On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Ferran Jorba wrote:
> The only grip is rather aesthetic; I'm getting tired about so much
> XML everywhere.
FWIW, I don't like XML config files either; I would take the good old
S-expressions any day over XML. I thought of XML mostly for the two
reasons outlined before: similarity with Indico, plus per-module
dump-edit-load runtime config files (e.g. the collection setup) that
we shall soon have and that are currently XML based.
As for using something more human-oriented, I would prefer even more
compact INI-like format instead of JSON or YAML, since it is even more
readable and nicer to edit, and we already use it to some extent in
Invenio in the BibRank module (e.g. wrd.cfg).
However, this would introduce two different config file formats, one
INI-like for "static-like" application configuration (e.g. weburl,
dbhost, dbuser, etc), and several XML-like for "dynamic-like" site
runtime configurations (e.g. collection setup, access control setup,
etc). This may not be ideal for coherence reasons, although one can
imagine such a split.
Another option would be to abandon XML and introduce an extended
INI-like format, for example with ConfigObj-like or gitconfig-like
constructs, that would be able to cover also the latter runtime
configurations too.
The choice is still open... We have a week or so to decide. ;-)
P.S. BTW, the author of my preferred window manager (=Ion), Tuomo
Valkonen, has blogged about his config language choice here:
<http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/archives/2007/01/20/T11_58_29/>.
I share his point of view on config formats to a large extent.
Best regards
--
Tibor Simko ** CERN Document Server ** <http://cds.cern.ch/>
