skylark VS ytt

My stance is that YAML is a good format for configuration management and generation -- it's wonderful at filling gaps as your deployment model increases in complexity to provide a mechanism to "render" your configuration -- much like Skylark [1] does (derived from Google's internal GCL).

YAML ends up being a powerfully declarative model [2] for the state of a data structure, rather than a straight representation, ironically often enough being used in turn for an imperative model like in Ansible [3]. Definitely friendlier than JSON. But personally, I really like YAML because it lets me compose using a traits/mixins-like model using & and , which allows for verbose, structured configuration inputs but concise configuration files.

docker-compose YAML files extension fields [4], imo, are a great example of this type of model in action. When you leave this much pre-deserialization flexibility in your configuration representation, it makes building cool stuff like docker-compose ECS support x-aws- extension keys [5] and other plugin system-type capabilities much more straightforward than, for example, adding a new language feature to HCL.

[1]: https://github.com/google/skylark

YTT - YTT is a templating tool that understands YAML structure. It helps you easily configure complex software via reusable templates and user provided values using the Starlark language.

Adding https://carvel.dev/ytt/ to the list. I was happy using this tool as IMO it mixes good things from Helm and Kustomize, however the syntax is ugly and repelling my colleagues to have a closer look.

> Templating yaml is a terrible, terrible idea

I've had a good time using ytt: https://carvel.dev/ytt/. It implements language-aware templating, which is IMO the only reasonable way to do it.

`ytt` is part of the Carvel toolchain. https://carvel.dev/ytt/

I agree with you on `you will want to see just plain texts instead of a bunch of templating token with hidden logic.` Which is why I think https://carvel.dev/ytt/ would be great. We could generate these templates in pipelines, or we could just make it easier to maintain what we have.

For more advanced configuration management you might be interested in ytt ( https://carvel.dev/ytt/ ) which is a "yaml-aware" templating tool. it lets you do "patches" via an overlay mechanism to add or remove specific yaml blocks, and it also lets you use a simplified python dialect for more complicated logic. With ytt you would put your DNS IP into a "data values" file and then run ytt to render it into the configs before handing them off to the deployment tool. e.g. `ytt -f | kubectl apply`

I said this above as well: ytt (https://carvel.dev/ytt/) lets you embed starlark into valid yaml, among other cute tricks for managing biz-logic in configs.

Manifests are generated with ytt (https://carvel.dev/ytt/).

This is why you should consider https://carvel.dev/ytt/