Yes, the lobste.rs thread also has that feedback: Github Actions is a tremendously useful platform, but the syntax and tooling sucks! Since JSON is valid YAML,

Yes, the lobste.rs thread also has that feedback: Github Actions is a tremendously useful platform, but the syntax and tooling sucks! Since JSON is valid YAML, it's possible to generate JSON from an Oil configuration with embedded and parsed shell, rather than using YAML. (Actually there's no problem generating YAML either, but I suppose it's easier to think about.) Example: I changed my own configs to use .yml.in and .yml and it worked on both Travis CI and sourcehut. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/tree/master/.builds https://github.com/oilshell/oil/tree/master/.builds Some brainstorming here on this feature: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Config-Dialect https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Config-Dialect The benefit would be that it would validate your syntax and possibly your schema locally, not remotely. Some services have command line tools, but I'm sure they don't validate your shell, only the configuration. Another benefit is the ability to reuse code and configuration. For example, my .builds/ dir has a fair bit of redundancy in its configuration, and that could be "factored" with a real language. YAML has a limited << reference mechanism that does some of this. I'm looking for feedback on Oil, as well as the YAML + shell replacement idea. I hope that Oil can be a flexible language that will let people write these sorts of front ends for many cloud services, i.e. "distributed shell scripts". And eventually enable portability across clouds too. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Where-To-Send-Feedback https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Where-To-Send-Feedback