[sorry about not chiming in earlier]
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 16:05:03 +0800
Yan Zhao <yan.y.zhao@intel.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 04:23:21PM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
(...)
Based on the feedback we've received, the previously proposed interface
is not viable. I think there's agreement that the user needs to be
able to parse and interpret the version information. Using json seems
viable, but I don't know if it's the best option. Is there any
precedent of markup strings returned via sysfs we could follow?
I don't think encoding complex information in a sysfs file is a viable
approach. Quoting Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.rst:
"Attributes should be ASCII text files, preferably with only one value
per file. It is noted that it may not be efficient to contain only one
value per file, so it is socially acceptable to express an array of
values of the same type.
Mixing types, expressing multiple lines of data, and doing fancy
formatting of data is heavily frowned upon."
Even though this is an older file, I think these restrictions still
apply.