use a human config format

[gregwebs]

JSON is for data interchange. It doesn't support simple necessities such as comments, it was not designed to be a user configuration format.

Possible options are YAML or TOML.
I haven't used TOML, but with YAML I immediately convert it to JSON in my programs.

[michaelsauter]

I'm not a huge fan of YAML, and definitely not TOML. Everyone knows how to write JSON, and I don't think it's too cumbersome to write. I also don't see a huge need for comments, Cranefiles should be fairly simple and self-explanatory.
What's great about JSON is that it can be serialised into a string (which can be used instead of a Cranefile).

I might add support for YAML as an alternative though. Not a priority for me, but I'd include it if there's a pull request :)

[gregwebs]

What's great about JSON is that it can be serialised into a string (which can be used instead of a Cranefile).

Right, this is why I advocate converting from a human format YAML into a computer format JSON as soon as possible and retaining the ability to send and receive JSON.

Rather than patch this program I am using a converter program yaml2json executable. There are probably lots of them out there for different languages, and if not they are probably fairly easy to write.

[michaelsauter]

I definitely want to have JSON as the main format, also because I'm experimenting with this:

crane lift --config='[{"name":"pry", "image":"d11wtq/ruby", "run":{"tty": true, "interactive": true, "cmd": "pry"} }]'

That just cannot be done with YAML. I'm open to allow a crane.yaml though.

[gregwebs]

I think it could be done in either of these ways: crane lift --config-file=crane.yaml or crane lift < crane.yaml. In fact, I think those are both preferable to putting JSON on the command line because

• the JSON was originally in a multi-line form unless it was auto-generated
• if a JSON string contained a single quote it would break the command line

[michaelsauter]

Right now, it doesn't make much sense to use --config. I'm thinking about using Crane to read in local configuration, potentially transform it, and send it on the fly to a different host. In that case, a string is the best option.

[gregwebs]

sure, that makes sense. reading in a configuration can be from a multi-line YAML or JSON file, some settings could be validated, and then the data would be sent as a JSON string.

[gregwebs]

awesome, thanks!