Messages in this thread | | | From | "mirabilos" <> | Subject | Re: Device Registry (DevReg) Patch 0.2.0 | Date | Tue, 24 Apr 2001 16:43:44 -0000 |
| |
> > > The Linux Device Registry (devreg) is a kernel patch that adds a device > > > database in XML format to the /proc filesystem. It collects all > > OH SHIT!! ^^^ > > Why don't you just add postscript output to /proc? > > XML wasn't my first choice. The 0.1.x versions used simple name/value pairs, > I gave this up after trying to fit the complex USB > configuration/interface/endpoint data into name/value pairs. Thinking about > text file formats that allow me to display hierarchical information, XML was > the obvious choice for me. Are there alternatives to get complex and > extendable information out to user space? (see > http://www.tjansen.de/devreg/devreg.output.txt for a example /proc/devreg > output) > My other ideas were: > - using a simple binary format, just dump structs. This would break all > applications every time somebody changes the format, and this should happen > very often because of the nature of the format > - using a complicated, extendable binary format, for example chunk-based like > (a|r)iff file formats. This would add more code in the kernel than XML > output, is difficult to understand and requires more work in user space > (because XML parsers are already available) > - making up a new text-based format with properties similar to XML because I > knew that many people dont like the idea of XML output in the kernel.. I > really thought about it, but it does not make much sense.
What about indenting? I think of 0 spaces before the device name, 1 space before properties which belong to the device. (Is one level enough? I'm currently offline so didn't check the sample) Structure per entry: [Space] Name colon property It also could be an equality sign, but then we could use no indention at all and [] for the sections, which leaves us at .INI format, which after all still is lotta more readable after cat than XML.
> The actual code overhead of XML output compared to a format like > /proc/bus/usb/devices is almost zero, XML is only a little bit more verbose. > I agree that XML is not perfect for this kind of data, but it is simple to > generate, well known and I dont see a better alternative. > > bye..
-mirabilos
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |