Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] let qemu-img info genereate json output

[Eric Blake]

On 08/15/2012 02:49 AM, Benoît Canet wrote:
>> I think an --format=json option would be a bit more extensible and
>> better matches what most tools are doing these days.
> 
> The qemu-img info subcommand already use the "-f" short option.
> What alternative could be use instead of --format=json ?

You are right that the mnemonic 'format' collides with -f and -F
(rebase), and 'output' collides with -o and -O (convert).  Maybe we
could use the mnemonic '--layout=json', since '-L' appears to be
available?  Or maybe '--machine=json' with -m, to indicate that the
output is machine-parseable (and where other machine-parseable layouts
like xml might be added in the future)?

Also, there's no rule that says that the short option must match the
mnemonic of the long option; we could always go with the short option of
'-j' even if the long option is spelled '--format', even if it means a
theoretical addition of '--format=xml' would map to the odd-looking '-j
xml'.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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