NAME

       md_src_plugins_ni_README - README

       • infos = Information about ni plugin is in keys below

       • infos/author = Markus Raab elektra@libelektra.org

       • infos/licence = BSD

       • infos/needs =

       • infos/provides = storage

       • infos/placements = getstorage setstorage

       • infos/description = Reads and writes the nickel ini format

       This plugin uses the nickel library in order to read/write metakeys in the nickel ini
       format. It's purpose is to be used in the spec-namespace or when any metadata should be
       stored.

       For ini files for applications, e.g. smb.conf you should prefer the ini plugin.

   Usage
       To mount a ni plugin you can simply use:

       kdb mount file.ini spec/ni ni

       The strength and usage of this plugin is that it supports arbitrary meta data and is still
       human readable. E.g.

       [key]
       meta=foo

       creates the key with meta data key meta and meta data value foo:

       $ kdb getmeta user/ni/key meta
       foo

       the meta data for the parent key has following syntax:

       []
       meta=foo

       Line continuation works by ending the line with \\.

       Exporting a KeySet to the nickle format:

       kdb export spec/ni ni > example.ni

       For in-detail explanation of the syntax (nested keys are not supported by the plugin,
       however) see nickel-1.1.0/include/bohr/ni.h

   Limitations
       • Supports most KeySets, but kdb test currently reports some errors (likely because of the
         UTF-8 handling happening within ni).

       • Keys have a random order when written out.

       • No comments are preserved, they are simply removed.

       • Parse errors simply result to ignoring (and removing) these parts.

   Nickel
       This plugin is based on the Nickel Library written by author: charles@chaoslizard.org

       Nickel (Ni) has its strength in building up a hierarchical recursive Node structure which
       is perfect for parsing and generating ini files. With them arbitrary deep nested hierarchy
       are possible, but limited in a keyname of a fixed size.

       The API of nickel is very suited for elektra, it can use FILE* pointers (using that
       elektra could open and lock files), the node-hierarchy can be transformed to keysets, but
       it lacks of many features like comments and types.

       The format is more general then the kde-ini format, it can handle their configuration
       well, when the section names do not exceed the specified length. Nesting is only required
       in the first depth, any deeper is not understood by kde config parser.

       The memory footprint is for a 190.000 (reduced to 35.000 when rewrote first ) line ini
       file with 1.1MB size is 16.88 MB. The sort order is not stable, even not with the same
       file rewritten again.

       src_plugins_ni_bohr libraries 'https://github.com/chazomaticus/bohr'