[Nagiosplug-devel] Plugin output format

[Ton Voon]

On 24 Jul 2007, at 18:30, Holger Weiss wrote:

> * Thomas Guyot-Sionnest <Thomas at zango.com> [2007-07-24 10:11]:
>>>> So, my suggestion would be to change the standard plugin output  
>>>> to print
>>>> only the "Information text" and to print "STATUS: Information  
>>>> text" when
>>>> the plugin was called with "--verbose".  Opinions?
>>>
>>> I agree. But somehow I like the status string even though I can't  
>>> find
>>> an argument for that. Yet I'd cast my vote to remove both and  
>>> declare
>>> them optional in the guidelines.
>>
>> I like the status line too :)
>>
>> Why not do the opposite and add a --quiet option.
>
> I don't want the plugin to be --quiet, I want --no-redundant- 
> output ;-)
> Well, yes, if people really want the STATUS and/or SERVICE output, I'd
> prefer having such an option over not even having it, of course.

Just to put some context to this, there was a hot dispute at the time  
this was included in the dev guidelines. I think I proposed it and  
Karl, then team lead, said OK grudgingly as long as there was a note  
saying that the format is not to be relied upon. So that's how we got  
here.

I guess the SERVICE part can be dropped. I like the STATUS line  
(though it gets confusing if you run negate :) - I side with Matthias  
here: "I'm not sure why".

>> --verbose is already used for debugging, so that would mean we'd  
>> need to
>> change all --verbose into --debug or something similar.
>
> As I thought that printing out the STATUS _is_ only interesting for
> debugging purposes, my idea was to keep it simple and just add the
> STATUS to the current (possibly multi-line) --verbose output.  I  
> didn't
> really see the need to have the option of printing out a single line
> including the STATUS _next_ to the option of printing out the  
> STATUS if
> requesting the "--verbose" output.

I definitely do not want more options on command line, at least not yet.

My feeling is that if we can get a single function to return the  
output, used by all our plugins, then it is easy to change the  
removal of the status part on a global basis (configure time  
option?). That's where the hard work is.

Ton

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