Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 01/18] maintenance: create basic maintenance runner

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 16:17:45 -0700

Taylor Blau wrote:

> I still only partially buy into this, though. I had to deal with some
> rather fragile grepping through trace2 JSON in t4216 (? or something,
> the log-bloom tests) recently, and found it a little fragile, but not
> overly so.
>
> I'd rather just move forward,

This means we're promising to never change the JSON serialization, or
that we're willing to pay with time in the future to update all tests
that assume the current JSON serialization.

I do not want to make that promise.  I've lived through the same work
of updating tests that assumed particular sha1s and having to change
them to be more generic and do not want to have to do that again.

If you're saying that you are willing to do that work when the time
comes, then that counts for a lot.  If you're saying that we should
not change the JSON serialization, then it makes me worry that we made
a mistake in choosing JSON as a format, since using a well defined
format with an ecosystem of serialization + deserialization libraries
was the whole point.

Jonathan