Re: [gentoo-dev] Use GLEP27!

[Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org>]

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>>>>> On Tue, 15 Dec 2015, Mike Frysinger wrote:

> a flat text file akin to /etc/passwd is not readable.  xml is readable.

ESR's case study about the password file format seems to disagree:
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch05s01.html#id2901332

I think the name:password:uid:gid:gecos:directory:shell format is
readable well enough for human eyes. Certainly it is machine readable;
even with standard tools like fgetpwent(3) (or its equivalent in other
programming languages).

> a markdown like format would work -- easy to parse by machines & humans
> and is a single stackable file.

Reinventing the wheel?

> user:ntp
> <whitespace>uid:203
> <whitespace>gid:203
> user:man
> <whitespace>uid:13
> <whitespace>gid:13
> (using : as delimiter since that's what *NIX uses in /etc/passwd)

> the main one would grow probably to about 2000+ lines (~400 users in
> the tree and each entry takes ~4 lines assuming we enforce eliding
> of defaults) which isn't that terrible.

To me this looks like a lot of added redundancy for little (if any)
benefit.

Ulrich

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