Question of the day: What configuration file formats do you all like and use?
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org For configuring what?
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org key=value\n or JSON. YAML is the worst and I don’t understand why it’s so popular.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org i made my own :D
I do prefer toml for the old school ini style with added support for object lists.
my second would be hjson or any other json with comments style.
For Python, env files with dotenv.
For JS, usually JSONP or a config.js
For PHP a config.php with an array usually works
For C#, I try to avoid the ugly native XML, but it’s what most of the team use…
For most I have a .env.sample in the repo, and we ignore .env or config* to avoid storing credentials.
Yeah, the lack of comments makes regular JSON not a good configuration format in my view. Also, putting all keys in quotes and the use of commas is annoying. The big upside is that’s in lots of standard libraries.
I think the appeal with YAML is that is has comments, is kind of easy to write and read and also provides unlimited nesting levels. But it has all its drawbacks, no question. Forbidding tabs, thousands of different string flavors, having so many boolean options (poor Norwegians) etc. I use it, but I don’t particularly enjoy it.
Among simple key value pairs, I like INI files, but with # for comments, not ;. I never used TOML, read up on it yesteray before writing this question, but it looks a bit weird and has some strange rules. I guess I have to give it a try one day.
And yes, as mentioned by several of you, it always depends on the complexity of the configuration at hand.
I’m developing something for the scouts at the moment with rather simple requirements on the config. Currently, there are just four settings. Even INI would be overkill with its section. I selected JSON for now, because that’s readily available with Go’s std lib. But I do not like it.
Btw. what’s your own config format, @xuu?
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Lack of comments are definitely a shortcoming of JSON. I don’t like TOML because it lets you have nested categories ([foo] [foo.bar] [foo.baz]) and it just feels confusing to me, even with indentation. Simple INI files are okay.
The Prosody XMPP server’s configuration file is just a Lua script because Prosody is written in Lua, and that’s excellent.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Regarding YAML’s readability, I miss the - for list items constantly when reading YAML files. I’ll get confused because I think I’m not in a list or I’m in the previous list item, then I have to go back. List items are all on the same indentation column and one tiny character is the only thing defining a new one. I don’t know if others have this problem.