[pacman-dev] Config file handling (was: [PATCH] Change -z|--showsize flag to ShowSize pacman.conf option)

[Roman Kyrylych]

2007/6/1, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
> On 6/1/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/1/07, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 6/1/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Aaron and I both want to move this config file parsing to the front
> > > > end; any objections to this? It will be quite a change, but we can
> > > > make it much more robust while moving it. Is anyone familiar with how
> > > > config file parsing is done by other programs? It seems like a very
> > > > manual process currently, and a malformed config file brings pacman
> > > > down. I also think we should try to continue when we encounter an
> > > > unrecognized option.
> > >
> > > What do you mean "other programs"? As in, an elegant parsing system?
> > > Or how other apps parse pacman.conf?
> >
> > How other C-coded apps parse their config files in general. I don't do
> > it often in C, so I have no idea how it is usually done.
>
> Depends on the complexity of the app, but most of the time it's done
> manually in a similar way that we do it... that is, getline, strcmp,
> strcmp, strcmp, loop, done.
>
> I actually don't think our parsing is all that bad, it could just use
> some more info on the error case.
>

Sorry, for my previous post in old thread.
I'm reposting it here to keep track of it.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com>
Date: 1 Чер 2007 20:32
Subject: Re: [pacman-dev] [PATCH] Change -z|--showsize flag to
ShowSize pacman.conf option
To: Discussion list for pacman development <pacman-dev at archlinux.org>


2007/6/1, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
> On 6/1/07, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Aaron and I both want to move this config file parsing to the front
> > end; any objections to this? It will be quite a change, but we can
> > make it much more robust while moving it. Is anyone familiar with how
> > config file parsing is done by other programs? It seems like a very
> > manual process currently, and a malformed config file brings pacman
> > down. I also think we should try to continue when we encounter an
> > unrecognized option.
>
> What do you mean "other programs"? As in, an elegant parsing system?
> Or how other apps parse pacman.conf?
>

I'm suggesting to use 3rd party library for parsing.
I see 2 choices:
1) iniparser
there is nice console app that can be used by shell scripts to parse
config (made by James):
 http://archlinux.org/~james/projects/network/iniread-0.1/
usage example:
 http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-April/000415.html

2) libconfuse
this one has nice validation features

--
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)