netdev - Re: [PATCH bpf-next 2/3] bpf: btf: add btf json print functionality

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Date:   Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:40:48 -0700
From:   Jakub Kicinski <jakub.kicinski@...ronome.com>
To:     Martin KaFai Lau <kafai@...com>
Cc:     Okash Khawaja <osk@...com>, Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
        "Alexei Starovoitov" <ast@...nel.org>, Yonghong Song <yhs@...com>,
        Quentin Monnet <quentin.monnet@...ronome.com>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        <kernel-team@...com>, <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH bpf-next 2/3] bpf: btf: add btf json print functionality

On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:19:40 -0700, Martin KaFai Lau wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 02:49:52PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 14:27:43 -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:  
> > > BTF in JSON is very useful, and will help people who writes simple
> > > orchestration/scripts based on bpftool *a* *lot*.  I really appreciate
> > > this addition to bpftool and will start using it myself as soon as it
> > > lands.  I'm not sure why the reluctance to slightly change the output
> > > format?  
> > 
> > Ohh, maybe that's the misunderstanding, you only implemented JSON so
> > you wanted it to be as readable and clean as possible.  Hence the hex
> > output and cutting out the old cruft!  That perspective makes sense!
> > But I think we should keep JSON for machines (but including BTF
> > formatted values) and let's make the plain text output nice and clean,
> > agreed.  
> Right, it is what my earlier comment meant on "this ascii output is
> for human".  We merely call it json because we are reusing
> the json's meaning on {}, [] and int since it fits nicely
> on what we want to achieve, readability.  Other than that,
> it does not have to follow other json's requirements.
> We can call it whatever except json to avoid wrong
> user expectation.  Putting it under "-j"/"-p" was a mistake.
> Hence, I said this patch belongs to the 'plaintext" output.

Yes, that were the confusion came from, right.  I'm personally not sold
on JSON as "human readable" but I'm very far from a UI guru so up to
you :)  

I think it may be good to intentionally do non-JSON things, like use
hex integers, don't put quotes around strings, or always add a comma
after value, so people can't use it as JSON even if they try.

Basic printer is trivial to write, I'm concerned that the reuse of JSON
writer to create a user-readable output will bite us on the posterior
later on...