Re: [RFC] Yet another option for DPDK options

[Yerden Zhumabekov <e_zhumabekov@sts.kz>]

+1

We're using INI in our app, turned out to be quite simple, like this:

[eal]
;; EAL common options:
;;   -c COREMASK         Hexadecimal bitmask of cores to run on
# coremask = fff

;;   -l CORELIST         List of cores to run on
corelist = 3,4,5

;;   --lcores COREMAP    Map lcore set to physical cpu set
; coremap =

;;   --master-lcore ID   Core ID that is used as master
; master-lcore-id = 0

;;   -n CHANNELS         Number of memory channels
memory-channels = 4


On 01.06.2016 22:18, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 10:58:41AM -0500, Jay Rolette wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Wiles, Keith <keith.wiles@intel.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Started from the link below, but did not want to highjack the thread.
>>> http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-June/040021.html
>>>
>>> I was thinking about this problem from a user perspective and command line
>>> options are very difficult to manage specifically when you have a large
>>> number of options as we have in dpdk. I see all of these options as a type
>>> of database of information for the DPDK and the application, because the
>>> application command line options are also getting very complex as well.
>>>
>>> I have been looking at a number of different options here and the
>>> direction I was thinking was using a file for the options and
>>> configurations with the data in a clean format. It could have been a INI
>>> file or JSON or XML, but they all seem to have some problems I do not like.
>>> The INI file is too flat and I wanted a hierarchy in the data, the JSON
>>> data is similar and XML is just hard to read. I wanted to be able to manage
>>> multiple applications and possible system the DPDK/app runs. The problem
>>> with the above formats is they are just data and not easy to make decisions
>>> about the system and applications at runtime.
>>>
>> INI format is simplest for users to read, but if you really need hierarchy,
>> JSON will do that just fine. Not sure what you mean by "JSON data is
>> similar"...
>>
>>
> I'd be quite concerned if we start needing lots of hierarchies for configuration.
>
> I'd really just like to see ini file format used for this because:
> * it's a well understood, simple format
> * very easily human readable and editable
> * lots of support for it in lots of languages
> * hierarchies are possible in it too - just not as easy as in other formats
>    though. [In a previous life I worked with ini files which had address
>    hierarchies 6-levels deep in them. It wasn't hard to work with]
> * it works well with grep since you must have one value per-line
> * it allows comments
> * we already have a DPDK library for parsing them
>
> However, for me the biggest advantage of using something like ini is that it
> would force us to keep things simple!
>
> I'd stay away from formats like json or XML that are designed for serializing
> entire objects or structures, and look for something that allows us to just
> specify configuration values.
>
> Regards,
> /Bruce
>