The whole concept of templating language on top of YAML is suspect anyway, but I wish Salt had just gone with Mako as the default templating language. That way

The whole concept of templating language on top of YAML is suspect anyway, but I wish Salt had just gone with Mako as the default templating language. That way you could write plain Python in your templates and not have this horrible misuse of Jinja. I also have come to agree that a DSL is the best solution, though Puppet's particular DSL is not a great example. Projects that re-implement the same thing from scratch like mgmt[1] are on the right track, but probably won't gain enough traction. [1] https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/blob/master/docs/language-guide.md https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/blob/master/docs/language...