Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:40:48 -0700 | From | Jakub Kicinski <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH bpf-next 2/3] bpf: btf: add btf json print functionality |
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On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:19:40 -0700, Martin KaFai Lau wrote: > On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 02:49:52PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 14:27:43 -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote: > > > BTF in JSON is very useful, and will help people who writes simple > > > orchestration/scripts based on bpftool *a* *lot*. I really appreciate > > > this addition to bpftool and will start using it myself as soon as it > > > lands. I'm not sure why the reluctance to slightly change the output > > > format? > > > > Ohh, maybe that's the misunderstanding, you only implemented JSON so > > you wanted it to be as readable and clean as possible. Hence the hex > > output and cutting out the old cruft! That perspective makes sense! > > But I think we should keep JSON for machines (but including BTF > > formatted values) and let's make the plain text output nice and clean, > > agreed. > Right, it is what my earlier comment meant on "this ascii output is > for human". We merely call it json because we are reusing > the json's meaning on {}, [] and int since it fits nicely > on what we want to achieve, readability. Other than that, > it does not have to follow other json's requirements. > We can call it whatever except json to avoid wrong > user expectation. Putting it under "-j"/"-p" was a mistake. > Hence, I said this patch belongs to the 'plaintext" output.
Yes, that were the confusion came from, right. I'm personally not sold on JSON as "human readable" but I'm very far from a UI guru so up to you :)
I think it may be good to intentionally do non-JSON things, like use hex integers, don't put quotes around strings, or always add a comma after value, so people can't use it as JSON even if they try.
Basic printer is trivial to write, I'm concerned that the reuse of JSON writer to create a user-readable output will bite us on the posterior later on...
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