Re: [GSoC RFC PATCH v4 2/4] repo: add the field references.format

From: Justin Tobler <jltobler@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 16, 2025, 14:04 UTC
Message-ID: <2v7b6mpufnn6cj7u7tactgu2ibggn4xpuezl2bsfjxv62afrsa@chfrii6vkrx3>
In-Reply-To: <aHc6y9FGFXjowkU1@pks.im>

On 25/07/16 07:38AM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 02:15:07PM -0500, Justin Tobler wrote:
> > Also, as mentioned in a comment for the previous patch, maybe we should
> > support printing two output modes. For the default output, maybe a
> > simple `<key>=<value>\n` where the any value containing special
> > characters is quoted via `quote_c_style()`.
> > 
> > A null-terminated output, such as the one proposed in this patch, could
> > be enabled via a `-z` flag similar to how its done in other commands.
> 
> Agreed in general, but instead of using `-z` I wonder whether it would
> make sense to use something like `--format=key-value` and `--format=nul`
> instead. This gives us more room to introduce additional formats in the
> future, like for example the JSON format that was scrapped for now.

If we already plan to support additional output formats, they I agree we should probably a `--format=<output-type>` flag from the start. I still think it would be nice to have a `-z` flag that is shorthand for `--format=nul` though as that is fairly common across other commands to have such an option.

Out of curiousity, is there a reason we are interested in supporting a JSON output format in addition to what is already proposed? From an earlier conversation I had with Lucas, it didn't seem like there was any particular reason for JSON.

-Justin