ytt VS json5

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`

https://carvel.dev/ytt/

ytt lets you embed logic via a python-subset (starlark) and also provides "overlays" as a "replace/insert" mechanism. and all valid ytt files are valid yaml files, so they can be passed-through other yaml parsing stages.

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.

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

There's a reason that other tooling is taking different approaches. Visual workflows help for understanding existing manifests - but they'd be horrible for creating/modifying new ones.

Is the list on their website not good? https://github.com/json5/json5/wiki/In-the-Wild

And it shouldn't take much to modify an existing JSON parser.

JSON5 support

Meanwhile, formats have been evolving (JSON5, YAML), config entry points are constantly changing. These fluctuations, fortunately, were covered by tools like the cosmiconfig.

I think JSON5 is fairly close to this: https://json5.org

I reckon the only thing it's missing to be truly accessible to non-techies is that string values still need to be quoted, i.e. you can't have:

key: this is my value

(I'm definitely not saying it would be a good idea to allow quotes to be dropped, just that that's the only potential stumbling block I see for non-techies.)

I believe that's JSON5.

https://github.com/json5/json5

It's my preferred configuration file format, it fixes all the problems I have with JSON (trailing commas, comments) without turning it into a mess full of gotchas like YAML.

Might be interesting to check out json5.

https://json5.org/

I can relate. But after using JSON for a while (in files that I edit by hand), I realised that I really wanted comments and trailing commas (which leads to https://nigeltao.github.io/blog/2021/json-with-commas-commen...). Next I'd probably want multiline strings (leading to https://github.com/json5/json5).

But if you use those extensions, all your tooling breaks.

I think the real bike-shedding would start when you want to add some syntax for raw string literals (e.g. heredocs); it's one of those features that feels redundant, until the day when you really need it and can't bear the pain of escaping.