Draft: add initial schema validation support

[liambeguin]

Hi @tgingold-cern,

We spoke a few months ago about setting up the LICENSE file in this repository. At that time I started working on adding a JSON Schema validation step that could be used to check user inputs. Since then, I didn't have much time to continue work on implementing cheby as part of our process, but thought you might be interested in this feature.

• JSON Schema validation has few advantages:
  • the schema files contain documentation that can serve as a "language specification"
  • the schema can validate the input file making all checks in the code redundant
  • In a sense, this merges the checks in the code and the doc/

With all this, I think the biggest drawback is that people have to be able to write schema files, which can be a daunting at first.

Examples of other projects using this include devicetree validation used in the Linux kernel.

[liambeguin]

I rebased this on your latest master, but please note that this is still a work in progress.

If you think this feature is worthwhile, I could put time to complete this work.

[tgingold-cern]

Hello, yes that's something we are considering.

There is another group at CERN that has developed a GUI for Cheby and they also have a schema. But I don't know which schema they are using.

[liambeguin]

Hi @tgingold-cern,

On Fri, Oct 08, 2021 at 12:07:51AM -0700, Tristan Gingold wrote:

Hello, yes that's something we are considering. Thanks for getting back to me.

There is another group at CERN that has developed a GUI for Cheby and they also have a schema. But I don't know which schema they are using. If there's a way to collaborate, I'd be happy to help with this.

Cheers, Liam