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Why yes, I would like to see more of those in my k8s, so glad we finally have the technology
https://github.com/apple/pkl-k8s-examples/blob/96ba7d415a85c...
I'm really enjoying reading through the docs and the tutorial. We've created Lowdefy, a config web-stack which makes it really simple to build quite advanced web apps. We're writing everything in YAML, but it has it's limitations, specifically when doing config type checking and IDE extensions that go beyond just YAML.
I've been looking for a way to have typed objects in the config to do config suggestions and type checking.. PKL looks like it can do this for us. And with the JSON output we might even be able to get there with minimal effort.
Is there anyone here with some PKL experience that would be willing to answer some technical questions re the use of PKL for more advanced, nested config?
See Lowdefy:
https://lowdefy.com/
https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy
You are looking for templates: https://pkl-lang.org/main/current/language-tutorial/02_filli...
There’s another repo, the Pkl Pantry, that provides a couple of ready made templates (Schemas) that you can try out: https://github.com/apple/pkl-pantry
Reminds me of [HCL](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl), but without all the providers to deploy the config?
Kubernetes config is a decent example. I had ChatGPT generate a representative silly example -- the content doesn't matter so much as the structure:
https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a7...
Now consider 100s (if not 1000s) of such files.
I haven't given Pkl an in depth look yet, but I can say that the Industry Standard™ of "simple YAML" + string substitution (with delicate, error prone indentation -- since YAML is indentation sensitive) is easily beat by any of:
- https://jsonnet.org/
- https://nickel-lang.org/
- https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html
- https://dhall-lang.org/
- (insert many more here, probably including Pkl)
Kubernetes config is a decent example. I had ChatGPT generate a representative silly example -- the content doesn't matter so much as the structure:
https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a7...
Now consider 100s (if not 1000s) of such files.
I haven't given Pkl an in depth look yet, but I can say that the Industry Standard™ of "simple YAML" + string substitution (with delicate, error prone indentation -- since YAML is indentation sensitive) is easily beat by any of:
- https://jsonnet.org/
- https://nickel-lang.org/
- https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html
- https://dhall-lang.org/
- (insert many more here, probably including Pkl)
Try Deno with CDK8s! It's such a fantastic experience. Here's a repo for my home server: https://github.com/shepherdjerred/servers/tree/main/cdk8s
At some point, we'll publish more documentation about this, including instructions for how to build your own language binding.
And, it's only a sub-process right now, but we plan on also providing a C library as another way to bind to Pkl.
But if you want to learn more about how this works, feel free to connect with us on GitHub! https://github.com/apple/pkl/discussions
> So what we are missing now is a 500GB framework that can write the config file for the programming language that is writing a config file for the actual program I wish to use.
That exists since 1960. It's called LISP. The e.g. https://guix.gnu.org/ uses with great success, the Guile Scheme dialect of LISP, to be precise. And FYI the "framework" is:
$ ls --human-readable --size $(readlink $(which guile))
100%. Containers are essentially the new language-agnostic software libraries, but our current tools aren't adapted to write and distribute the "programs" formed from gluing them together.
(Mostly-shameless plug, this is what we're trying to solve with Kurtosis: https://github.com/kurtosis-tech/kurtosis )