[Distutils] comparison of configuration languages

Donald Stufft donald at stufft.io
Fri May 6 23:14:13 EDT 2016


> On May 6, 2016, at 10:59 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> Here's that one-stop writeup/comparison of all the major configuration
> languages that I mentioned:
> 
> https://gist.github.com/njsmith/78f68204c5d969f8c8bc645ef77d4a8f
> 
> -n
> 
> --
> Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig


While I personally prefer YAML to any of the options on a purely syntax based
level, when you weigh in all the other considerations for this I think that it
makes sense to go with TOML for it.

The only other option I think that could work is what Chris (I think?)
suggested and just use a Python literal evaluated using ``ast.literal_eval()``
this is safe to do but it would make it harder for other languages to parse our
files. It's similar to the approach taken by Lua Rocks for how their packaging
system works (although their uses variables instead of one big dictionary which
I think looks nicer) but Lua is much better suited for trying to execute safely
outside of ``ast.literal_eval()`` too.

All in all, I think TOML is the right answer (and that's why my partially
written PEP used TOML).

-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 842 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/attachments/20160506/ae030de8/attachment.sig>


More information about the Distutils-SIG mailing list