Before we implement SDL package format for DUB

[Sönke Ludwig via Digitalmars-d]

Am 26.08.2014 00:14, schrieb Idan Arye:
> On Monday, 25 August 2014 at 16:40:10 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I've been working on SDL support for DUB and wanted to get some
>> people's opinions on whether we should really use SDL.  I've posted my
>> thoughts here:
>> http://forum.rejectedsoftware.com/groups/rejectedsoftware.dub/thread/2263/
>>
>
> You said that "The standard way to read a dub package description is to
> use the output of "dub describe", not to parse dub.json directly", but
> what about tools that *write* to dub.json? Currently, if an IDE wants to
> use DUB behind the scenes as it's build system it can parse dub.json and
> modify it as it wishes, and that should even work if someone modified
> dub.json by hand. But what if someone modifies dub.json by hand and adds
> ASON stuff to it? I think we need a command like `dub normalize` that'll
> convert the dub.json file into a pure JSON file that has exactly the
> same data, so IDEs could call it before loading dub.json.

That's a good point. Although I think that IDEs would be best off 
limiting themselves to JSON, because not keeping comments and formatting 
for any more complex format may be an issue.

However, SDL has on it's plus side that there are implementations for 
Java, .NET, D and Ruby. So most popular IDEs *could* relatively easily 
add support. Any IDE that can integrade D libraries can also use DUB as 
a library.