[GSoC] Machine readable output from userland utilities

[Vsevolod Stakhov]

On 23.05.2014 17:04, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I'd actually prefer that some library API (like what's in libstatfoo)
> gets fleshed out to cover what hooks and options are required so you
> don't have to have the bikeshed argument of "what format." You only
> need to write some code to output it in the format you want.
>
> The UNIX way is tools, not policy. The library is a policy, sure, but
> it's a policy to let you define your own policies. It won't be locking
> anyone into anything like "json or bust."
>
> So how about the focus be on that, rather than trying to teach
> individual tools about individual encoding types?

That is actually exactly what I'm proposing by using UCL. Store output 
as UCL objects and convert them to a human readable output, json, xml, 
yaml, libnv. Moreover, libucl is already in the base, so it is worth to 
check if its capabilities is enough for the vast majority of userland tools.

-- 
Vsevolod Stakhov