[dmidecode] Question: YAML and/or JSON output support

[Matthew Giassa]

Good day,

I'm working on a hobby project involving various dev boards, and I use
`dmidecode` to help distinguish what "type" of board the software is
running on, at run time. Some of the programs that run on the various
boards are written in different languages, including C, C++, Golang,
Python 2/3, and so on.

While there are dmidecode-specific parsers of varying levels of maturity
for most of these languages, it would be preferable if `dmidecode`
itself could directly export to YAML and/or JSON formats (no need to use
various parsers with differing licenses). Would this feature be
allowable, for example:
* As a direct modification to `dmidecode` itself (i.e. additional
 feature; requires linking against additional libraries).
* As a variant of `dmidecode`: i.e. wrap the feature in #ifdef's, and
 have the build/makefile script compile multiple binaries, including a
 "stock" `dmidecode`, and a second binary, `dmidecode_json` (only the
 latter would link against additional external libraries). Additional
 libraries are needed for the `dmidecode` package itself, but not the
 "stock" (i.e. no JSON/YAML capability) `dmidecode` binary. Could
 possibly result in two separate downstream packages derived from the
 same source.
* Just fork/branch the source: I could also just fork the Github-mirror
 repo if this functionality isn't wanted/needed in the mainline repo. I
 imagine others would benefit from this feature, based on the existence
 of multiple dmidecode-specific parsers, so this route only makes sense
 if this feature doesn't belong in `dmidecode` mainline/master.

What do the developers/maintainers think of these possible approaches to
implementing such a feature?

Thank you.

--

-Matthew