I'd be more concerned with having configuration options that were obtuse enough to require in-line comments.
Rick On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Ilya Dmitrichenko <errordevelo...@gmail.com>wrote: > Why cannot you add a section on dependencies in the README file? There you > can explain in plain-english whatever you wanna say about those > dependencies! > > Cheers, > -- > Ilya > > > On 5 January 2013 18:22, Alex Kocharin <a...@kocharin.ru> wrote: > >> Hello, everybody. >> >> >> TL;DR: I think that JSON is not a suitable config file format, and I want >> npm to be able to read configs stored in some other way by default. It >> might be just javascript, or yaml, I don't really care as long as it better >> for configuration files than json. >> >> >> So, there is a dependency list in package.json, and it would be a good >> practice to have a comment for every line describing why we require that >> package, why we require that version of that package, what known problems >> we have and so on. >> >> But there's a small issue. JSON format doesn't allow comments in any way. >> >> Right now there are a couple of different ways around it of course: >> >> 1. Non-standard JSON entries like "@comment": "blablabla". Unfortunately, >> javascript editors doesn't highlight it as a comment, and it's just plain >> ugly. Also this violates strict javascript mode, so God knows what trouble >> it'll cause in the future. >> 2. Keep a commented dependency list in a separate file. This violates DRY >> principle, so we could update one file and forget to update another. The >> same goes for /**package **/ hack I believe. >> 3. Use some kind of build system. Just for damn comments in one file? >> >> Also, there's another wrong thing with JSON, it's too strict. You can't >> omit double quotes from keys, you can't leave a trailing comma, etc. JSON >> is human-readable, but it's just not damn human-writable. >> >> Well... I went for 3rd option for a very long time. We used package.js >> file and a Makefile that compile js to json. Yes, that's three damn files >> instead of one. That's an example of our package.js file. >> https://gist.github.com/4462764 . But a number of supported packages >> grew, and compiling this slowly became a major pain in the ass. I recently >> got an issue when I updated package.js, but forgot to compile it, and >> debugging this one was a quite interesting experience. So, I'm now in a >> mood of forking things and making all my public packages incompatible with >> mainstream npm... >> >> >> So, there's a couple of alternatives. For example, Travis use YAML, and >> there is CSON (it's coffeescript version with blackjack and hookers). >> >> And I think there was a couple of discussions about it. So, did anybody >> come up with more or less sane idea how to deal with this? What happened to >> package.json.js? >> >> >> Happy New Year! >> >> -- >> Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ >> Posting guidelines: >> https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "nodejs" group. >> To post to this group, send email to nodejs@googlegroups.com >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> nodejs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en >> > > -- > Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ > Posting guidelines: > https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "nodejs" group. > To post to this group, send email to nodejs@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > nodejs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en > -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to nodejs@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nodejs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
