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authorBoris Kolpackov <boris@codesynthesis.com>2018-07-21 12:52:25 +0200
committerBoris Kolpackov <boris@codesynthesis.com>2018-07-21 12:52:25 +0200
commitf572561f37badb1413c0ba80c1c397be3bf3b15e (patch)
treec0abb8c22e6bd64683582400d378109bd6f960ff /doc/manual.cli
parent85d0c04498aaee039a6771721ef78fdfde83c66b (diff)
Specify binary manifest representation
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/manual.cli')
-rw-r--r--doc/manual.cli16
1 files changed, 15 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/doc/manual.cli b/doc/manual.cli
index e760cd9..d6bdf29 100644
--- a/doc/manual.cli
+++ b/doc/manual.cli
@@ -249,7 +249,7 @@ of a repository, respectively.
\h#manifest-format|Manifest Format|
-The manifest file is a UTF-8 encoded text file containing a list of name-value
+The manifest format is a UTF-8 encoded text containing a list of name-value
pairs in the form:
\
@@ -487,6 +487,20 @@ license: <licenses> [; <comment>]
In the above example \c{name} is required, \c{license} has an optional
component (comment), and \c{description} is optional.
+In certain situations (for example, shell scripts) it can be easier to parse
+the binary manifest representation. The binary representation does not include
+comments and consists of a sequence of name-value pairs in the following form:
+
+\
+<name>:<value>\0
+\
+
+That is, the name and the value are separated by a colon and each pair
+(including the last) is terminated with the \c{NUL} character. Note that there
+can be no leading or trailing whitespace characters around the name and any
+whitespaces after the colon and before the \c{NUL} terminator are part of the
+value.
+
\h#manifest-package|Package Manifest|