I hate new DUB config format

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:17:02 UTC, 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.

I don't really like SDL from the little I've messed around with 
it (it's too much like the INI format for my taste), but we're 
talking about simple build configuration files here. It's not 
like this is an actual build script like you get with cmake or 
make. It's pretty much just a list of key-value pairs used to 
tell the build tool what to do. The files are very short, and you 
don't have to deal with them much. So, ultimately, while I don't 
really like SDL, I'm not sure that it's worth caring much about 
either.

That being said, the JSON format isn't going anywhere, so you can 
just use that if you prefer. In most cases, you shouldn't need to 
read any dub config files, unless you're working on the project 
that the config file is for, and in many (most?) of those cases, 
it'll probably be your own project. So, you can just use the 
format that prefer and ignore the other. Worst case, you can't 
use the default-generated dub config file when you start your 
project and have to copy a JSON one from elsewhere or write it 
from scratch, but if doesn't already, I'm sure that dub init 
could be changed to take a flag indicating the config format to 
use if enough folks prefer JSON.

- Jonathan M Davis