[FR] JSON AoS<->SoA redesign

[LebedevRI]

Currently, we emit each repetition separately into JSON (and all at once apparently).
This is quite bloaty.

If we ever want to support iteration-as-repetition thing (and i think we do),
and perhaps if we want to AoS<->SoA our internal structs (and i think we do, especially if we do iteration-as-repetition),
i think we need to change the JSON schema.
The numberic fields (times, counters) need to become arrays of integers.

The tools/ will support both schemes, but external tooling will need similar updates.
I don't think we'd want to support two different json formats?

@dmah42 thoughts?

[dmah42]

bold!

I agree that the current json is the most naive approach, but before changing it I'd like to understand if it's currently hard for tooling to work with it. I suspect SoA would be easier even without iterations-as-repetitions, but I'd like to be sure.

I also agree, one format not two. it's hard enough to lose CSV!

if we do change it I think that's a major version bump, no?

[LebedevRI]

Roundtripping between the two would be trivial for JSON tools,
but yes, i suppose that would require a major version bump.
I'll first look into tools/, that will make it more apparent.

[LebedevRI]

Actually, version bump won't exactly help, we don't store version into JSON. It's a classic fatal error...

[dmah42]

oof. maybe we should start doing that first... is that a version bump? :)

[LebedevRI]

Do we believe that it would it be sufficient just to make it possible
to differentiate the version in JSON, by adding it as a field?

[dmah42]

i think so.. at least then readers have a chance to check it.