Re: [RFC] Yet another option for DPDK options

[Arnon Warshavsky <arnon@qwilt.com>]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 7:18 PM, Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com
> 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
>
>

 +1 for a single cfg file parameter
 +1 for ini simplicity
/Arnon