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> The kind of thing you’d do with a two-line nested loop ... > that is was far simpler to just copy-paste the config six times. And that's the right way for i

> The kind of thing you’d do with a two-line nested loop ... > that is was far simpler to just copy-paste the config six times. And that's the right way for infrastructure and build configs. You do want over-verbose, no-logic code in the configs. Unlike app code, you rarely need to change it, and readability is even more important. 6 duplicates is not too many yet for infra code. In terms of copy-paste tolerance, I'd rank from least to most: app code, tests code, infra configs, and build pipeline configs.

acjohnson55 3y ago
I agree with you in a lot of situations but I think there are situations where the intention you want to communicate is "these 6 situations are the same, except for this variation, because X". If you duplicate, it can be hard to capture in a way that is as robust. And then you risk logical errors in your configuration, which can be very damaging.
paholg 3y ago
And yet, sometimes you do want to reuse code in infra configs and build pipelines. I have definitely wanted to reuse code in hcl, to the point that I wrote a Ruby script to generate it because that was easier than trying to do it in hcl. Clearly I'm not the only one. Gitlab even sees the use enough to support syntax that is invalid yaml: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/yaml_optimization.html#reference-tags https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/yaml_optimization.html#re... This, of course, causes yaml-language-server to complain. What I wouldn't give to have a language where I could, say "goto definition" for things like this rather than get LSP errors.