4 ms·

Never thought I'd see hackers saying INI format looked ugly of all things. It's basic, sure, but that's a good thing for something meant to be easily editable b

Never thought I'd see hackers saying INI format looked ugly of all things. It's basic, sure, but that's a good thing for something meant to be easily editable by hand from any editor. Otherwise, it's just key value pairs in named sections, how ugly can it be about that?

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
jjgreen 5mo ago
key-value pairs where the = cannot be surrounded by spaces, so I have to write [Service] Type=oneshot WorkingDirectory={{ home }}/current/ Environment=RAILS_ENV=production ExecStart=/bin/sh -lc "bin/db-backup --verbose" which fills me with sadness
- yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
  What? You absolutely can have spaces; most of mine look more like [Service] Type = oneshot WorkingDirectory = %h/current/ Environment = RAILS_ENV=production ExecStart = /bin/sh -lc "bin/db-backup --verbose"
  - jjgreen 5mo ago
    Friend, you have changed my life
    - weavie 5mo ago
      Is this one of those cases where at one point you had an error in the file and you figured it was down to spaces? You fixed that issue, it still didn't work but from that point you never thought to question the assumption. I find myself doing this sort of thing all the time..
      - troyvit 5mo ago
        That was (cough still is) ddclient for me.
      - jjgreen 5mo ago
        Somewhere in my head I had that spaces caused a syntax error, and the UI for systemd is not obvious when you first start using it ... so if it's working then leave well alone. I'll be making all of my .service files (not so many) human-readable in the near future!
    - bblb 5mo ago
      My epiphany a month ago was that I can use Environment = MULTIPLE=environment VARIABLES="in single line"
      - bingo-bongo 5mo ago
        Just remember: never use Environment= for secrets, since they are visible to all users on the system. (Use EnvironmentFile= instead)
- voxic11 5mo ago
  Whitespace immediately before or after the equals sign is completely ignored by the parser. Its the standard INI format.
  - Eduard 5mo ago
    Standard INI format™: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry/latest/basic-format.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry/latest/...
ramon156 5mo ago
TOML would look a lot more quiet, but I'm not sure if TOML would be a good fit
- kevinmgranger 5mo ago
  unit files barely have any nesting, so the INI-like format is already 90% of the way towards TOML, no?
  - OJFord 5mo ago
    I suppose some things that can be multiply specified would be arrays, and maybe there'd be a stronger argument for combining say timer & service in the same file (or that it could be optional) given some structure. Personally though I'm not really a fan of TOML when the data is highly structured - prefer YAML even a lot of the time for some visual indication. (If I were writing a parser, I have zero doubt I'd rather parse TOML!)

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

jjgreen 5mo ago

key-value pairs where the = cannot be surrounded by spaces, so I have to write [Service] Type=oneshot WorkingDirectory={{ home }}/current/ Environment=RAILS_ENV=production ExecStart=/bin/sh -lc "bin/db-backup --verbose" which fills me with sadness

yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
What? You absolutely can have spaces; most of mine look more like [Service] Type = oneshot WorkingDirectory = %h/current/ Environment = RAILS_ENV=production ExecStart = /bin/sh -lc "bin/db-backup --verbose"
- jjgreen 5mo ago
  Friend, you have changed my life
  - weavie 5mo ago
    Is this one of those cases where at one point you had an error in the file and you figured it was down to spaces? You fixed that issue, it still didn't work but from that point you never thought to question the assumption. I find myself doing this sort of thing all the time..
    - troyvit 5mo ago
      That was (cough still is) ddclient for me.
    - jjgreen 5mo ago
      Somewhere in my head I had that spaces caused a syntax error, and the UI for systemd is not obvious when you first start using it ... so if it's working then leave well alone. I'll be making all of my .service files (not so many) human-readable in the near future!
  - bblb 5mo ago
    My epiphany a month ago was that I can use Environment = MULTIPLE=environment VARIABLES="in single line"
    - bingo-bongo 5mo ago
      Just remember: never use Environment= for secrets, since they are visible to all users on the system. (Use EnvironmentFile= instead)
voxic11 5mo ago
Whitespace immediately before or after the equals sign is completely ignored by the parser. Its the standard INI format.
- Eduard 5mo ago
  Standard INI format™: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry/latest/basic-format.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry/latest/...

ramon156 5mo ago

TOML would look a lot more quiet, but I'm not sure if TOML would be a good fit

kevinmgranger 5mo ago
unit files barely have any nesting, so the INI-like format is already 90% of the way towards TOML, no?
- OJFord 5mo ago
  I suppose some things that can be multiply specified would be arrays, and maybe there'd be a stronger argument for combining say timer & service in the same file (or that it could be optional) given some structure. Personally though I'm not really a fan of TOML when the data is highly structured - prefer YAML even a lot of the time for some visual indication. (If I were writing a parser, I have zero doubt I'd rather parse TOML!)