Skip to content

[Req]: Ease vboxmanage automation using a known format such as JSON for --machinereadable command line option #772

Description

@koromodako

Component

VBoxManage CLI

What problem are you facing?

VBoxManage CLI is an awesome component of VirtualBox when it comes to automation BUT it would be even better if commands offering --machinereadable option were to output JSON instead of the current format.

Users could pipe VBoxManage output into jq and make VirtualBox automation more robust and powerful. it would be really interesting when working with showvminfo and iterating over network adapters or shared folders for instance.

How can we fix this?

One may choose to replace (or add, if backward compatibility is needed) --machinereadable with --json and implement JSON output if this option is present in the command line.

What alternatives or workarounds exist?

grep can be used but the robustness of the automation based on this depends on the user proficiency using regular expressions and adds complexity to projects automating VirtualBox.

Anything else we should know?

Thank you for the time spent reviewing this request.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Type

    No type

    Fields

    No fields configured for issues without a type.

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions