[Python-Dev] Draft PEP on RSON configuration file format (original) (raw)

Patrick Maupin pmaupin at gmail.com
Mon Mar 1 03:33:05 CET 2010

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

Well, a constructive approach would involve approaching projects which have devised their own formats, so as to know what kind of unified format they would be likely to accept (or not).

Trying to poll "selected projects which have configuration files" may or may not be a constructive approach. Most projects which have predefined formats are unlikely to change, unless there is standardization on a new format. It is very much a chicken and egg problem, although I agree with (and have implemented) the suggestion that I discuss this on python-list.

Having said that, one of the reasons I wrote the PEP and am working on a parser is because of a few projects I use and/or am personally involved in. For example, rst2pdf stylesheets are in JSON, e.g.

http://rst2pdf.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rst2pdf/styles/styles.json

Now, we're all programmers here, and we can read this, and can even modify it, but it is easy to get wrong, and very verbose with lots of syntax gotchas. For example, unlike Python, JSON won't even let you have a trailing comma.

But JSON is a great format, and RSON (like YAML) is designed to parse properly formatted JSON, so the goal is that any project which uses JSON could use RSON as a drop-in replacement, and then update its configuration data.

Of course, it is extremely easy (hence your yawn) to create a new configuration format, even if it is specified that it is upwards compatible with JSON. The trick is to create the correct new format, that at least some people can agree on.

In order to do this, I have chosen to poll, not preexisting projects, which have entrenched configuration data and a reluctance to change, but brand new projects which haven't been invented yet. Many of the inventors of those projects hang out on python-dev, so this seemed like a reasonable place to do polling.

As I tried to make clear, I will not be too disappointed if I do not come up with something worthy of the standard library for a long time (if ever), but the PEP process is very valuable, and I would like to start off on the right foot by soliciting feedback before I do too much coding.

Sorry if it feels like spam; this is my last message on the matter until and unless somebody wants to constructively discuss the actual contents of the PEP. Please feel free to email me privately if you don't want to clutter up this list.

Thanks and best regards, Pat

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