Before we implement SDL package format for DUB

[Jonathan Marler via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 27 August 2014 at 15:27:25 UTC, Gary Willoughby 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 27 August 2014 at 15:07:22 UTC, Jonathan Marler 
> wrote:
>> IMO, ASON has a nice balance between being very simple and 
>> very nice for humans to write/maintain.  I also think there 
>> are some JSON variants that do the same thing, json5 looks 
>> nice, but it doesn't support the SingularName feature that 
>> ASON does which would fix the nesting issue.
>
> I'm not necessarily arguing that Json is great or flexible. I'm 
> arguing, well maybe arguing is a strong word, i'm positing that 
> something more complicated than Json isn't really needed at 
> this time.
>
> I understand the argument that it would be nice for 
> human-friendly constructs to be present in the dub file but is 
> this really a problem dub is facing at the minute?

Yes. dub is most definitely facing this problem at this minute.

> Are lots of devs venting their spleens over not being able to 
> include comments, heredoc strings and such in dub files? The 
> dub registry is gaining traction lets not throw an obstacle in 
> the road now.

heredoc's is a new one, but comments/nesting/trailing 
commas/unquoted strings, yes, most assuredly yes. Have you not 
been reading people's concerns about JSON? How could you say that 
people aren't complaining?

>
> Also inventing a Frankenstein format that is both a superset of 
> Json and SDL just sounds horrible and just sounds wrong. It's 
> just too much. Your effort would be better directed to 
> something which is an immediate problem. Not re-inventing this 
> particular wheel.

I most definitely wouldn't call ASON a "Frankenstein" format.  I 
didn't design ASON to be a superset of SDL, that's just how it 
worked out.  Just like YAML happens to be a superset of JSON.  
Instead of saying it "sounds horrible and just sounds wrong", why 
don't you look at the language spec and say what is wrong about 
it.  It's fine if you think we shouldn't use a new language but 
even if no one ever uses it, it's helpful to know what features 
people think are good/bad so we can all learn something.

>
> Sonke has said Json will always be an option in dub. Which is 
> fantastic because now that dub has reached an official level as 
> the de-facto package manager we need to embrace stability and 
> stop this needless change which has been plaguing D forever.

Yes, JSON will always be used to represent the package format on 
the back-end.  So it makes sense to allow users to use it on the 
front-end if they wish.  And again, adding a new format isn't a 
"needless change", why do you think so many people have such 
strong opinions about what format to use.  You seem to be one of 
the only ones that thinks adding a new format (or using "lenient 
JSON") is a bad thing.

>
> I honestly think Ason should be abandoned as an unneeded 
> solution looking for a problem and something more stable and 
> recognised like Yaml or XML, etc. implemented in future *if 
> needed* and actually if requested by dub's users.

You seem to be stuck on the idea that I think DUB should use 
ASON. I created this thread so I could learn from other people 
what they think about this format and others.  Even though you 
haven't added anything helpful, after reading other people's 
posts I'm now leaning more towards SDl.  My biggest complaint is 
that it might be confusing for people to go between the SDL 
version and the JSON version.  However, Sonke thinks that he can 
make a much more friendly package format with SDL's extra 
features like tag values/attributes.