Re: Bootstrap DATA is a pita

On 02/21/2015 11:43 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
>> On 02/21/2015 09:39 AM, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>>> Personally, I think I would prefer that we use JSON (and yes, there's
>>> a JSON::Tiny module, which definitely lives up to its name).
>>> For one thing, we've made a feature of supporting JSON, so arguably we
>>> should eat the same dog food.
> We've also made a feature of supporting XML, and a lot earlier, so that
> argument seems pretty weak.

Fair enough

>
> My only real requirement on the format choice is that it should absolutely
> not require any Perl module that's not in a bog-standard installation.
> I've gotten the buildfarm code running on several ancient machines now and
> in most cases getting the module dependencies dealt with was pure hell.
> No non-core modules for a basic build please. I don't care whether they
> are "tiny".
>
>

The point about using the "tiny" modules is that they are so small and
self-contained they can either be reasonably shipped with our code or
embedded directly in the script that uses them, so no extra build
dependency would be created.

However, I rather like your suggestion of this:

> {
> oid => 2249,
> oiddefine => 'CSTRINGOID',
> typname => 'cstring',
> typlen => -2,
> typbyval => 1,
> ...
> }

which is pure perl syntax and wouldn't need any extra module, and has
the advantage over JSON that key names won't need to be quoted, making
it more readable.

cheers

andrew