Re: [PATCH 0/8] Add 'ls-files --json' to dump the index in json

From: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 21, 2019, 13:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CACsJy8A=Vhwgv8cvs8s2f_aJ5W335s8CdqRQCDSFrdJu2j9fjw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.1906211515160.44@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 8:16 PM Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> > I think your warning in the manpage that this is for debugging is fine,
> > as it does not put us on the hook for maintaining the feature nor its
> > format forever. We might want to call it "--debug=json" or something,
> > though, in case we do want real stable json support later (though of
> > course we would be free to steal the option then, since we're making no
> > promises).
>
> Traditionally, we have not catered well to 3rd-party applications in Git,
> and this JSON format would provide a way out of that problem.
>
> So I would like *not* to lock the door on letting this feature stabilize
> organically.
>
> I'd be much more in favor of `--json[=<version>]`, with an initial version
> of 0 to indicate that it really is unstable for now.

Considering the amount of code to output these, supporting multiple formats would be a nightmare. I may be ok with versioning the output so the tool know what format they need to deal with, but I'd rather support just one version. For third parties wanting to dig deep, I think libgit2 would be a much better fit.

-- 
Duy