Yaml parser library

Desktop
#1

Hi,

I’m developing a gnome-shell extension. I need to parse a YAML file. Is there a YAML parsing library built into Glib? I can’t find one. What other options do I have if there is no one? Gnome doesn’t use nodejs or any other browser runtime, so usage of external libraries is quite problematic as well.

Thanks

#2

No, there is no YAML parser in GLib; and AFAIK, there are no YAML parsers that are integrated with the GNOME stack. In any case, even if there were, you would not be able to use them in a Shell extension, because it would add a system dependency.

#3

nodejs isn’t a browser runtime, and that’s sorta the point? fwiw the JS engine used in GJS is the same as in Firefox

I mean GJS can load JS modules, or any introspected GObject library, though of course that doesn’t mean anyone has actually written what you want — and as @ebassi observed, some dependencies may or may not be suitable for use in a shell extension.

I would however be very surprised if nobody has written a JS module that can parse YAML from a string

#4

@ebassi @zbrown Thanks for the info! I thought GJS used some custom JS engine.
There are JS yaml parsing libraries. I’m going to adopt one for my extension.

#5

There are two options to do this in extensions:

  • Use one of the compatible opensource libraries in your extension (reference to that project and license MUST be included or your extension will be rejected).

  • Use spawn command to call the parser and get the result (for example, yq).

    In that case:

    • You MUST mention in the description that your extension is using that as a dependency.
    • You MUST check the availability of the dependency before the spawn command and show a notification if needed (with Main.notify()).
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