graphviz

[Nick Hibma]

>> Let’s remember that not everyone wants a singing-and-dancing-Linux-boot-up-screen with colours and full screen animations. I run tincd / tincctl on remote systems with access over a serial console. My terminal is usually set badly because of that, so colour output is of no use and screws up my screen. It bloats the executable.
>> 
>> The output tincctl produces all the output that is needed, and can be rearranged by a Perl script to your liking. Or have it dump json if you like, to make it fully parseable.
>> 
>> UNIX provides a toolbox approach, not an application approach.
> 
> I agree with most of that. But adding a few ANSI escape codes to color the
> output is hardly bloat. I like the way tools like ls or git handle output:
> plain text by default or if it is detected that the output is not to a
> terminal, color if requested, and just enough customizability to make it easy
> to interface with other tools.

Making your colours terminal agnostic requires inclusion of curses or something like that. Compare i18n or l12n. And you are entering bike-shed territorium.

> The output of "tinc dump nodes" is quite simple, but not really set in stone.
> For example, more information might be added in the future leading to more
> columns. Or some might disappear. So the option of a bit more structured output
> would help the toolbox approach.

As I said, JSON (or YAML, XML, or anything else that catches your fancy).

Nick
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