[Bro-Dev] Feedback on configuration framework implementation

[Johanna Amann]

On 7 Dec 2017, at 14:56, Azoff, Justin S wrote:

>> On Dec 7, 2017, at 5:22 PM, Johanna Amann <johanna at corelight.com> 
>> wrote:
>
>> Indeed, that is my thought. This seems like a job for broker, instead 
>> of trying to somehow force this into a complex ascii-representation.
>>
>> Note that this is just a limitation of the config reader - the rest 
>> of the config framework (that does not deal with file reading) does 
>> not care what you throw at it and will happily accept tables, etc. So 
>> if you get Broker to give you a table you should be able to just use 
>> the calls for setting options with that table afterwards.
>>
>> Johanna
>
> Cool.. so you figure something like a python script to load/organize 
> your data from whatever upstream source you have, then just call 
> Option::set using broker?

Yup.

> I think the ascii representation of data structures would still help 
> in a few places.. bro is in a weird place right now where we have json 
> and 'print' that can output an
> ascii representation of almost any data structure, but what it outputs 
> is not always valid bro code that can be parsed in the other 
> direction.

You might have a point - however that kind of is a problem that I think 
is out of scope for the config framework. Plus - if we ever introduce 
something it will work without changes with the config framework as it 
is now (and the config reader should be able to read anything new that 
the input framework supports because it just re-uses functionality)

Johanna