rules_jsonnet
jk
rules_jsonnet | jk | |
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1 | 9 | |
64 | 399 | |
- | 0.0% | |
6.7 | 0.0 | |
about 1 month ago | over 1 year ago | |
Starlark | Go | |
Apache License 2.0 | Apache License 2.0 |
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rules_jsonnet
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Jsonnet – The Data Templating Language
I can definitely sympathize here - in every context, just straight JSON/YAML configuration seems never expressive enough, but the tooling created in response always seems to come with sharp edges.
Here are some of the things I appreciate about Jsonnet:
- It evals to JSON, so even though the semantics of the language are confusing, it is reasonably easy to eval and iterate on some Jsonnet until it emits what one is expecting - and after that, it's easy to create some validation tests so that regressions don't occur.
- It takes advantage of the fact that JSON is a lowest-common-denominator for many data serialization formats. YAML is technically a superset of JSON, so valid JSON is also valid YAML. Proto3 messages have a canonical JSON representation, so JSON can also adhere to protobuf schemas. This covers most "serialized data structure" use-cases I typically encounter (TOML and HCL are outliers, but many tools that accept those also accept equivalent JSON). This means that with a little bit of build-tool duct-taping, Jsonnet can be used to generate configurations for a wide variety of tooling.
- Jsonnet is itself a superset of JSON - so those more willing to write verbose JSON than learn Jsonnet can still write JSON that someone else can import/use elsewhere. Using Jsonnet does not preclude falling back to JSON.
- The tooling works well - installing the Jsonnet VSCode plugin brings in a code formatter that does an excellent job, and rules_jsonnet[0] provides good bazel integration, if that's your thing.
I'm excited about Jsonnet because now as long as other tool authors decide to consume JSON, I can more easily abstract away their verbosity without writing a purpose-built tool (looking at you, Kubernetes) without resorting to text templating (ahem Helm). Jsonnet might just be my "one JSON-generation language to rule them all"!
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Though if Starlark is your thing, do checkout out skycfg[1]
[0] - https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jsonnet
[1] - https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
jk
- Jsonnet – The Data Templating Language
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The Curse of NixOS
People have tried: https://github.com/jkcfg/jk
But yeah I agree. The thing is, if all you need is robust determinism why do you need a full functional language with currying and other complex concepts?
Google had the same problem for Bazel, and their solution (Starlark) is way easier to understand.
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Pants vs. Bazel: Why Pants may be the right choice for your team
If I were writing a build system today (and I did just write one actually to test out some ideas) I would use Typescript for the language with something like jk to provide hermeticity. Typescript has many advantages, especially over Python, but mainly:
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The Perfect Configuration Format? Try TypeScript
It's possible to sandbox most languages, and with some work you can probably make them deterministic too.
Here's an example: https://github.com/jkcfg/jk
That beats having to learn an entirely new language.
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Cue: A new language for data validation
Maybe Javascript? A lot of web tools support Javascript config files. There's this nice-looking effort to provide a hermetic execution environment for them: https://github.com/jkcfg/jk and if you use Typescript you get an extremely good static type system too. Plus the language is already very well known with loads of tool support and documentation.
Definitely what I would use today.
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What is the difference between JSON and YAML?
If you think "but I need conditionals and file inclusion and ..." then maybe consider just allowing a full programming language instead. Someone pointed me to jk which looks like it is heading in the right direction, except that it outputs YAML by default for some insane reason.
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Boa release v0.13
You may be interested in jk. If you don't want to use a special purpose configuration language (jsonnet, cue, dhall, etc), this is a nice alternative that uses js in a hermetic runtime (but see their open issues for progress on that). They seem to also be adding native typescript support so you could even have type checking built-in.
What are some alternatives?
skycfg - Skycfg is an extension library for the Starlark language that adds support for constructing Protocol Buffer messages.
vm2 - Advanced vm/sandbox for Node.js
isopod - An expressive DSL and framework for Kubernetes configuration without YAML
dhall-lang - Maintainable configuration files
ursonnet - experimental ur-cause tracer for jsonnet
pants - The Pants Build System
aperture - Rate limiting, caching, and request prioritization for modern workloads
hof - Framework that joins data models, schemas, code generation, and a task engine. Language and technology agnostic.
nickel - Better configuration for less
FlatBuffers - FlatBuffers: Memory Efficient Serialization Library
github-desktop - A version of GitHub Desktop packaged with Conveyor
jsonnet - Jsonnet - The data templating language