Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:24:58 -0800 From: Harrison Grundy <harrison.grundy@astrodoggroup.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Massive libxo-zation that breaks everything Message-ID: <54F42C6A.1000309@astrodoggroup.com> In-Reply-To: <AEB1CF1E-9429-4C86-A59E-E1C86C019098@FreeBSD.org> References: <54F31510.7050607@hot.ee> <54F34B6E.2040809@astrodoggroup.com> <CAG=rPVfcB1Fy_8mHq-t5Ay07yrzuSGthQ0ZcGzvp0XG9gSSzkg@mail.gmail.com> <54F35F29.4000603@astrodoggroup.com> <F1683E9A-6004-4749-BD6E-A5B2472F6C77@FreeBSD.org> <75C49F53-C675-4712-A446-370025EED037@me.com> <AEB1CF1E-9429-4C86-A59E-E1C86C019098@FreeBSD.org>
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On 03/02/15 01:23, David Chisnall wrote: > On 1 Mar 2015, at 21:29, Rui Paulo <rpaulo@me.com> wrote: >> >> On Mar 1, 2015, at 11:11, David Chisnall <theraven@FreeBSD.org> >> wrote: >>> How would it be in a port? It involves modifying core >>> utilities (some of which, like ifconfig, rely on kernel APIs >>> that change between releases) to emit structured output. >>> Maintaining two copies of each utility, one in the base system >>> with plain-text output only and another in ports with XML/JSON >>> output would be very painful. >> >> It would work fine if we had *libraries* for >> ifconfig/netstat/route/etc. Obviously that's not the case and no >> one has stepped up to implement them. I've also seen FreeBSD >> committers expressing their distaste for libraries for "trivial" >> command line utilities, which implies they are unaware of another >> world beyond the CLI. :-) > > I am completely in favour of libraries for the underlying > functionality of these commands and would love to see all of the > system management commands become thin wrappers around a library, > though it's a lot of engineering work. In particular, these > libraries will need to have stable APIs that we can support across > multiple major releases, and getting those right is difficult. We > really don't want to be stuck in 10 years maintaining a hastily > designed API for a library. > > I see one use of the libxo output as helping to design those APIs. > People are going to wrap various tools in libraries for their > favourite scripting languages and this will give us a corpus for > experimenting. > > It's also worth noting that often invoking a tool and consuming its > output is the easiest way to get a stable API and ABI where > performance is not a primary concern (i.e. most management > interfaces). > > As to a world beyond the CLI, I saw a nice demo a few years ago of > a terminal emulator that used WebKit and came with a hacked-up set > of parsers for common tools. I'd love to have something simpler > (no need for a full WebKit - simple outline and table views would > be enough and could be done with curses for ssh) for FreeBSD where > I could type ls in the CLI and get a table view that I could then > sort and filter by selecting column headings. Those of us that > have used Lisp and Smalltalk environments know that a CLI doesn't > have to be a teletype emulator. > > David It would seem like the libxo stuff runs the risk of becoming this same API. --- Harrison
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