From: "Wiles, Keith" <keith.wiles@intel.com>
To: "Richardson, Bruce" <bruce.richardson@intel.com>,
Jay Rolette <rolette@infinite.io>
Cc: Yuanhan Liu <yuanhan.liu@linux.intel.com>,
Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon@6wind.com>,
"dev@dpdk.org" <dev@dpdk.org>,
"Tan, Jianfeng" <jianfeng.tan@intel.com>,
Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>,
Christian Ehrhardt <christian.ehrhardt@canonical.com>,
Panu Matilainen <pmatilai@redhat.com>,
Olivier Matz <olivier.matz@6wind.com>
Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [RFC] Yet another option for DPDK options
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2016 18:13:01 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <A6E90FD8-3F04-40E6-A4C5-DCB06289987D@intel.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20160601161826.GA9760@bricha3-MOBL3>
On 6/1/16, 11:18 AM, "Richardson, Bruce" <bruce.richardson@intel.com> wrote:
>On Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 10:58:41AM -0500, Jay Rolette wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Wiles, Keith <keith.wiles@intel.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Started from the link below, but did not want to highjack the thread.
>> > http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-June/040021.html
>> >
>> > I was thinking about this problem from a user perspective and command line
>> > options are very difficult to manage specifically when you have a large
>> > number of options as we have in dpdk. I see all of these options as a type
>> > of database of information for the DPDK and the application, because the
>> > application command line options are also getting very complex as well.
>> >
>> > I have been looking at a number of different options here and the
>> > direction I was thinking was using a file for the options and
>> > configurations with the data in a clean format. It could have been a INI
>> > file or JSON or XML, but they all seem to have some problems I do not like.
>> > The INI file is too flat and I wanted a hierarchy in the data, the JSON
>> > data is similar and XML is just hard to read. I wanted to be able to manage
>> > multiple applications and possible system the DPDK/app runs. The problem
>> > with the above formats is they are just data and not easy to make decisions
>> > about the system and applications at runtime.
>> >
>>
>> INI format is simplest for users to read, but if you really need hierarchy,
>> JSON will do that just fine. Not sure what you mean by "JSON data is
>> similar"...
>>
>>
>I'd be quite concerned if we start needing lots of hierarchies for configuration.
>
>I'd really just like to see ini file format used for this because:
>* it's a well understood, simple format
>* very easily human readable and editable
>* lots of support for it in lots of languages
>* hierarchies are possible in it too - just not as easy as in other formats
> though. [In a previous life I worked with ini files which had address
> hierarchies 6-levels deep in them. It wasn't hard to work with]
Maybe INI will work for hierarchies, but I bet it was not super obvious without a lot of comments.
>* it works well with grep since you must have one value per-line
>* it allows comments
We can have comments in any format not really a deciding factor IMHO.
>* we already have a DPDK library for parsing them
>
>However, for me the biggest advantage of using something like ini is that it
>would force us to keep things simple!
Simple is good and with any of these formats you can be simple or complex, just depends on the usage.
If all I wanted was to run a few examples then I would say INI is just fine. I would like to have a configuration file that can help me understand the system and pick the right options for a two socket system or one socket or system with 4 cores or 16 or running in a VM/container or not or FreeBSD or Linux or … you get the picture all with a single image (maybe not with the FreeBSD/Linux).
In a static data format you do not get these easily (maybe if you added a bunch of different options and then made the code figure out which ones to use), in a interpreted language you do get them for free.
This is why I do not want just a database of options.
>
>I'd stay away from formats like json or XML that are designed for serializing
>entire objects or structures, and look for something that allows us to just
>specify configuration values.
>
>Regards,
>/Bruce
>
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-06-01 18:13 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 49+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-06-01 15:00 Wiles, Keith
2016-06-01 15:46 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-01 16:08 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-01 15:58 ` Jay Rolette
2016-06-01 16:18 ` Bruce Richardson
2016-06-01 16:21 ` Arnon Warshavsky
2016-06-01 18:13 ` Wiles, Keith [this message]
2016-06-01 18:31 ` Stephen Hemminger
2016-06-03 10:07 ` Yerden Zhumabekov
2016-06-01 18:51 ` Thomas Monjalon
2016-06-02 9:19 ` Marc
2016-06-02 7:56 ` Yuanhan Liu
2016-06-02 10:41 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-02 13:19 ` Thomas Monjalon
2016-06-02 13:53 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-02 17:11 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-02 19:33 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-02 19:41 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-02 20:08 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-02 20:53 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-02 22:34 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 2:17 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-03 9:57 ` Bruce Richardson
2016-06-03 10:06 ` Bruce Richardson
2016-06-03 12:03 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 10:29 ` Bruce Richardson
2016-06-03 11:01 ` Bruce Richardson
2016-06-03 11:50 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 12:01 ` Arnon Warshavsky
2016-06-03 12:53 ` Panu Matilainen
2016-06-03 14:31 ` Arnon Warshavsky
2016-06-03 16:04 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-03 16:10 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-03 17:44 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 18:29 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-03 18:38 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 18:52 ` Arnon Warshavsky
2016-06-03 19:00 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-03 19:07 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-03 19:18 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 19:23 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-06-03 19:28 ` Arnon Warshavsky
2016-06-03 21:42 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-03 21:41 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-05 0:19 ` Neil Horman
2016-06-03 21:40 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-03 21:38 ` Matthew Hall
2016-06-03 12:14 ` Panu Matilainen
2016-06-02 20:51 ` Matthew Hall
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