Re: problib and JSON, SExp, and/or whatever (was: sysinst split project - The Configuration File)

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

2009/12/16 Greg A. Woods <woods%planix.ca@localhost>:
> At Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:57:26 -0500, Matthew Mondor 
> <mm_lists%pulsar-zone.net@localhost> wrote:
> Subject: Re: sysinst split project - The Configuration File
>>
>> This is a question I asked myself several times as well, why doesn't it
>> also support a saner import/export format (SExp or JSON for instance)?
>
> This would be _very_ interesting to me!

I would imagine for compatibility with the original Apple plist format
and to avoid a system with configuration files in a variety of N
different formats.
Apple also defined a binary .plist format for speed on
parsing/generation which we do not (yet) support.

What might be more interesting (and generally acceptable) would be a
tool which sanity checked proplib files and also converted them
between different formats,
so you could do something like "plist -e -f json foo.plist" ("-e": run
EDITOR, "-f json" convert to/from format json for edit)

If you are going to want to permit applications using different
proplib representations then you are going to need to need the tool to
convert between them anyway, so treat that as a first goal.