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I'll say it: I think YAML is great and a joy to use for configuration files. I can write it even with the dumbest editor, I can write comments, multi-line strin

I'll say it: I think YAML is great and a joy to use for configuration files. I can write it even with the dumbest editor, I can write comments, multi-line strings, I can get autocompletion and validation with JSON schema, I can share and reference other values. It allows tools to have config schemas that read like a natural domain specific language, but you already know the syntax. I haven't had problems with it at all.

martinpw 7y ago
This was me too - until yesterday, when I made a minor change to one of our YAML config files and everything broke. On investigation it turned out that all of our YAML files had longstanding errors but those errors happened to be valid syntax and also did not cause any bad side effects, so we had been getting away with it by pure luck until I made a change that happened to expose the problem. So now no longer a YAML fan...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  That would make me not a fan of the particular parsers/validators I've been using, rather than not a fan of YAML. The big strike against YAML I see there is that it needs a good conformance test suite and implementations need to be tested against it. But that's not a problem with the format but a fairly easy to fix ecosystem problem.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Izkata 7y ago
    > of the particular parsers/validators But the syntax was valid, the parsers/validators would've been correct to accept it.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
I've got to say it is the most frustrating config file ever to wrote. The only time I have to use it is for Docker Compose and I am constantly fighting vim on indentation and trying to make sense of confusing errors about "unexpected block start." Do you have any suggested vimrc for YAML?
meowface 7y ago
I agree. As long as you're using a strict parser, I've found YAML to be much nicer for configuration than JSON. I use Python's ruamel.yaml library, and have never had any weird type problems. Once the nesting gets too deep, it can be a pain. but that's the same for JSON. I have found myself using TOML more and more for configuration, though. It helps a lot with keeping things flat and easy to read. I'll still prefer YAML over JSON for human-writable files, but I'm starting to prefer TOML over YAML.

martinpw 7y ago

This was me too - until yesterday, when I made a minor change to one of our YAML config files and everything broke. On investigation it turned out that all of our YAML files had longstanding errors but those errors happened to be valid syntax and also did not cause any bad side effects, so we had been getting away with it by pure luck until I made a change that happened to expose the problem. So now no longer a YAML fan...

dragonwriter 7y ago
That would make me not a fan of the particular parsers/validators I've been using, rather than not a fan of YAML. The big strike against YAML I see there is that it needs a good conformance test suite and implementations need to be tested against it. But that's not a problem with the format but a fairly easy to fix ecosystem problem.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Izkata 7y ago
  > of the particular parsers/validators But the syntax was valid, the parsers/validators would've been correct to accept it.

morpheuskafka 7y ago

I've got to say it is the most frustrating config file ever to wrote. The only time I have to use it is for Docker Compose and I am constantly fighting vim on indentation and trying to make sense of confusing errors about "unexpected block start." Do you have any suggested vimrc for YAML?

meowface 7y ago

I agree. As long as you're using a strict parser, I've found YAML to be much nicer for configuration than JSON. I use Python's ruamel.yaml library, and have never had any weird type problems. Once the nesting gets too deep, it can be a pain. but that's the same for JSON. I have found myself using TOML more and more for configuration, though. It helps a lot with keeping things flat and easy to read. I'll still prefer YAML over JSON for human-writable files, but I'm starting to prefer TOML over YAML.