[ClusterLabs] Coming in pacemaker 2.0.2: XML output from tools

[Ken Gaillot]

Hi all,

Another new feature considered experimental in the upcoming pacemaker
release is XML output from tools for easier automated parsing. To begin
with, only stonith_admin will support the new syntax; more tools will
be added in later releases.

stonith_admin (and eventually all the tools) will accept two new
command-line options:

  --output-as <format>
  --output-to <file>

The selected format may be "text" (the default) or "xml". If "text",
the tool will behave the same -- it will print human-friendly, plain
text output. If "xml", the tool will print results in XML format; a
schema will be provided in /usr/share/pacemaker/schemas/api.

A file name may be specified to send output to the specified file (if
unspecified or "-", it will print to standard output as usual).

The benefit of XML format is that it will be more reliable for external
applications to parse than relying on human-friendly messages that may
change from release to release. The goal will be to keep the XML format
backward-compatible with new releases.

For 2.0.2, the XML format will be considered experimental, and may
change in future releases (though we don't expect it will for
stonith_admin).

The feature has been designed so that it would be relatively easy to
add new formats (such as JSON) if the need arises.
-- 
Ken Gaillot <kgaillot at redhat.com>