[Dancer-users] YAML, why?

[P Kishor]

Hi Alexis,


On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Alexis Sukrieh <sukria at sukria.net> wrote:
> Le 22/09/2010 14:24, P Kishor a écrit :
>>>
>>> Configuration files, on the other hand, are not meant to be written with
>>> a
>>> programming language.
>>
>> who says so? I use PDL (Perl Data Language), a highly complex and
>> powerful software, probably the most complex I have ever used, and all
>> its configuration required to build it are done using a extremely
>> readable perl data structure.
>
> Well, Dancer has been written with one main idea in mind: everything should
> be simple and intuitive.
>
> If there is one reason why people like Dancer, it's because of that: it's
> simple, intuitive and elegant.
>
> YAML configuration files contribute to that, it's very handy to just drop a
> list of key/value pairs in one config.yml file and just start working.
>
> Of course you can find many examples of applications whose configuration
> files are written with a programming language, but I dislike that.
>
> Because if you let the user write his configuration files with a script,
> sooner or later someone will start putting code inside, and that's a pandora
> box.
>
>>> YAML is a very good and well-kown format for
>>> human-readable configuration files.
>>>
>>
>> Again, who says so? citations?
>
> My experience tells me that. Again, if you want to write pure perl Dancer
> settings, you can do it. YAML files are there for people who want to keep
> their settings outside of their code.
>
>
>> Besides, who wants human-readable? I want programmer-readable. No
>> human reads the config files on a daily basis, but my computer does
>> all the time. I just gave you an example above where a simple
>> indentation can cause misunderstanding both to the human and the
>> computer.
>
> I precisely want human-readable here. Again, Dancer is meant to be as easy
> to handle as possible. It's a key feature. You won't make me change my mind
> on this ;)
>


My intent was not to change your mind, but just to have a
conversation. I totally respect your decision to implement config-ing
with YAML, but I appreciate the fact that I can also provide the same
info as a Perl data structure via settings.

YAML itself doesn't bother me -- it is its focus on indentation and
white space as being meaningful that bothers me. As I gave my example,
the config code fragment for enabling utf-8 as shown on Dancer website
croaks with an error. So, I can't even take the "canonical" example
and cut and paste it in my code and expect it to work. That, to me,
does not make a simple framework. That makes an needlessly fragile
framework that is prone to errors based on which way the wind is
blowing.

Anyway, enough said -- config is such a small part of my overall
application that I will either learn how to implement it in YAML
(thankfully, only very little learning required) or just use Perl
settings.

Great framework, by the way. Well on its way to being the best out there.




> Of course, if you really like, you can write a plugin that will do what you
> want.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Alexis Sukrieh
>



-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org
Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu
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