[lttng-dev] [barectf] why YAML instead of CTF?

[strager]

I have a CTF metadata file (schema) and hand-written parsers and writers for streams with that schema. I am interested in writing a tool which generates the parsers and writers (instead of hand-writing them).

It looks like barectf is similar to the tool I want to build. However, barectf reads a custom file format for the schema instead of reading a CTF metadata file.

Question: Why does barectf read a custom YAML format instead of reading CTF metadata? My plan was for my tool to read the schema from a CTF metadata file. Are there technical reasons why it's bad to make a code generator with CTF metadata as input? Because babeltrace2 can read CTF metadata files, I thought CTF metadata was machine-readable.

Thanks,
strager