[PATCH] CSV output for "samba-tool drs showrepl"

[Flavio Stanchina]

Andrew Bartlett via samba-technical wrote:
> On Wed, 2018-10-24 at 17:20 +0200, Flavio Stanchina via samba-technical
> wrote:
>> This patch adds CSV output (option --csv) to "samba-tool drs
>> showrepl".
>>
>> The output is meant to be equivalent to:
>>     repadmin /showrepl /csv
>>
>> We use this to monitor our Samba DCs with Check_MK; [...]
> 
> Since Samba 4.9 we have a --json output, and we are moving to JSON as
> our text-based interchange format.  While not matching the windows tool
> you mention, it should help your use case.

Using CSV was easy because it didn't require changes on the monitoring 
server. Using JSON would be better of course, but I would also need to 
hack a new parser into Check_MK and that's beyond the time I have available.

> That isn't to say we absolutely couldn't have a --csv option (say if
> there are common scripts around the windows tool), but I would be more
> cautious as it it isn't as structured.  It would also need (reliable!)
> tests added.

Don't know if there are any other tools using REPADMIN's CSV output; I 
could argue that it should be added to samba-tool anyway for one-to-one 
feature compatibility with Windows tools, but I can see why you don't 
want to add code nobody's using.

> If you still wanted to go forward with it then rebasing it on master
> and writing those tests would be the first step.

Thanks for your comments, will look into rebasing and writing some tests 
(I hope I can figure out how to do that).

-- 
Flavio Stanchina
Informatica e Servizi
Trento - Italy