kubecfg VS nickel

kubecfg does add some features, like https:// imports, oci:// imports (oci bundles in OCI registries, transitively bundling all imported files with jsonnet-deps).

But yes, I strive to keep the "one file, one target, import whatever you need but explicitly" as much as possible.

I'm pouring some more time into the project and trying to implement some ideas I had for a long time but never managed to get them out. For example "Flags From Files" (https://github.com/kubecfg/kubecfg/blob/flagspec/docs/rfcs/r...) or "Caching + optional vendoring of immutable external deps".

You shouldn't write those manifests by hand in any non-hobby project. https://github.com/kubecfg/kubecfg

Should kubecfg be used instead (having active development)?

We use kubecfg and it is what I would recommend to anyone looking to create a sustainable GitOps workflow at work.

So, its key features are:

1. domain-specific: designed for conveniently creating and composing derivations. This reason alone already justifies a new language, or an embedded domain-specific language (such as the Guile/Scheme for guix), or a mix of both (Starlark, the build language of Bazel embedded in a restricted Python-variant).

2. purely functional: this ties well into the philosophical backing of Nix the package manager, which aims to be purely functional, also known as hermeticity in other build systems (Bazel).

3. lazily evaluated: similar to other build systems (including Bazel), so that you can build only what you need on demand.

4. dynamically typed: this one is controversial. Being dynamically typed—in other words, not developing a type system—gets Nix out of the door first. But users often complain about the lack of proper types and modularity. There are experiments to address this, such as Nickel (https://github.com/tweag/nickel).

It is understandable that a one-pager may not have space for the whys.

Nickel：Nickel is a straightforward configuration language aimed at automatically generating static configuration files. Essentially, it's akin to JSON with the addition of functions and types.

Also look at nickel which is an evolution of nix. It's my favorite in this space.

nickel-lang.org

https://github.com/tweag/nickel

Or this https://github.com/tweag/nickel

Nickel is a programming language. While HCL is just a configuration format, so not really comparable.

Here's a comparison with similar tools: https://github.com/tweag/nickel#comparison

As for 'providence', I suppose you meant provenance :) it's been delayed because this was less critical for 1.0 to decide on or to implement (as it: it doesn't break backward compatibility in any way to add this feature in the short term), but this is very much on the roadmap: Issue #235. That's a must-have in a language with merging like Nickel.

Have you considered using a different language for templating? this could be a BIG selling point. Some good ones are cue-lang (though I haven't seen support for rust), kcl or nickel-lang.