Listing all the available packages in a machine-friendly fashion?

[VioletGiraffe]

I'm working on a simple GUI for vcpkg, just to make my life easier (not that vcpkg is difficult to use). I want to list all the available packages, and I have a problem parsing vcpkg search --x-full-desc output, as well as vcpkg search. It's because of the lack of unambiguous delimiters, and also because some packages are missing version number. Is there a way to get this list in a more computer-friendly form? Perhaps, parse some file within vcpkg installation folder instead of parsing vcpkg search output?

[ras0219-msft]

Thanks for the suggestion!

I'd love to have a mode that outputs in a machine friendly format (--xml?). I think this would be better than trying to "track" vcpkg's parser for the control files.

I'd be happy to review a PR adding this!

[cmpute]

You could have a look at my progress here. Directly reading the ports directory is quite simple.

[VioletGiraffe]

@cmpute : very nice work, that makes my project obsolete. I'll just use your GUI :)
My mistake was looking for a single file that describes the repository state; I didn't notice the "ports" folder.

[MikeGitb]

I think it would still be useful to have a integrated function that e.g. produces a json output listing both available packages as well as installed packages (installed packages might have a different version than the port files). That way, not everyone who wants to build tools on top of vcpkg has to search and parse the ports and packages directories.

[henrik-jensen]

You could have a look at my progress here. Directly reading the ports directory is quite simple.

@cmpute - Could you point to where you attack this problem in your repo?

Edit:
Oh sorry, forget it, - found it.
It's the parser in Port.cs ( obviously, d'oh :-) ) you are refering to.

[JackBoosY]

Thanks for @VioletGiraffe @cmpute , I have the same idea too.

[NancyLi1013]

This issue hasn’t been updated in a year; if it is still an issue, please reopen.

[MikeGitb]

Best I can tell, this is still not implemented please reopen.

[VioletGiraffe]

I concur, but I also understand that this is a low priority task for vcpkg maintainers.

[PhoebeHui]

I noticed there is an option '--x-json' for listing libraries in JSON format, but it's still in experimental.

  --x-json                        (experimental) List libraries in JSON format