On Mar 21, 2013, at 8:33 AM, Thomas Brettin <brettin@mcs.anl.gov> wrote:

I've had a number of discussions with Rick on the issue of the COMMANDS file. We see this file going beyond just defining the set of commands deployed in IRIS. It in fact specifies what commands are in the KBase CLI. We plan to integrate the file with the release engineering process.

This was my concern at the get-go about just introducing a new file with an ad hoc, non-standard format. Even though Bob said at the time that the file will contain "a trivial amount of data that doesn't need a more complex encoding", your statement that the file will be going beyond just defining a set of commands (itself complex enough) should justify that the COMMANDS file now adopt a more standard format, such as JSON (cf. Shreyas's email).