Back to SDL question

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, October 19, 2017 13:34:31 Suliman via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> First of all I would like to say sorry for Ludwig, that 2 years
> ago I was initiator to making JSON back by default for dub
> config. It was really my mistake.
> Only some time later I understand that it was big error.
>
> So I would like to ask community about if all agree to make .sdl
> format to dub by default?
>
> The second problem. It's naming. It's really hard to google SDL.
> Is there any other ways? Maybe renaming or so?

LOL. There were plenty of folks besides you who didn't like SDL, and I doubt
that all that many of them have changed their minds.

Personally, I don't like either, but I prefer JSON to SDL. However, if you
prefer SDL, then use SDL. Both are options, and that means that for better
or worse, if you're dealing with a lot of dub projects, you're probably
going to have to deal with both. The only real benefit I see to having your
preferred format be the default is that it increases the chances that any
given project will use that format and decreases the chances that you'll
have to deal with the other format when working on projects done by other
people (since plenty of folks will just use the default and not care).
You're still going to have to deal with both either way unless you only work
on your own projects, and if you only work on your own projects, then the
only real downside to the default not being what you want is that you have
to tell dub to use your format when it asks instead of just hitting enter.

IMHO, if there was ever a mistake here it was in introducing a second format
(which I think was SDL) - not because one is better than the other but
simply because then we have to deal with two formats. I think that it was
Sonke's attempt to switch to a better format - which was well-intentioned -
but since dub was already being used quite a bit by that point, switching
was too big a change for it to really work out (especially since there were
plenty of folks who preferred the older format). So, in spite of Sonke's
good intentions, we then ended up with two formats, which sucks, but that's
the way that life goes with software development sometimes - and other
things too (e.g. it would be great if the entire world used the exact same
voltages for their power grids and the same wall sockets so that everything
was compatible, but that's _way_ too big a change for that to be happening
at this point).

I certainly don't want to deal with yet more arguing over what the default
should be, and I'm pretty sure that Steven's right about Andrei insisting
that dub be switched back to JSON, because JSON is a standard, and SDL is
not. And if that was his stance, you're not going to get him to change over
something that ultimately doesn't matter that much. We're talking about one
configuration file that isn't even all that big and which you usually edit
only rarely.

LOL. If anything, I hate the fact that everything that dub generates uses
tabs instead of spaces, since I don't think that tabs should be used for
much of anything ever, but Sonke clearly prefers tabs based on what he's
done with dub and what the dub and vibe.d codebases looks like. It's one of
those cases where code style differences causes me grief. However, as
annoying as that is, I can just fix the generated files and move on with
life - just like I can just fix the fact that the generated JSON files put
braces on the same line or any number of other things that aren't set in
stone when using dub.

- Jonathan M Davis