ProjectEnvironmentFileFormat

Bocca went with the single-implementation choice (python) and the configparse file format standard. The remainder of this page is only of historical interest.

XML just isn't fit for human consumption.
INI (key-value) isn't fit for human consumption either on large projects if they must be describe by a single ini file.
As important as format is "where are the file(s) put" and "customizing settings per-component after reading project defaults".
Any other format (using braces and scope notions with 'natural' sidl syntax embeddable) will require
- parsers we don't yet have.
- or a commitment to a single choice of scripting language for all our build tools.
- Antlr+C (where only the C is distributed for normal use) is maximally portable and callable from other languages (using babel of course).
- documenting the parse tree/table structure and commitment to keep it stable will be critical, because we want to write a wide variety of outputs (makefile, configure.in, test drivers, component draft code).