dub: JSON, SDL, YAML, TOML, what color should we paint it ?

[0xEAB]

On Wednesday, 1 March 2023 at 07:41:02 UTC, tastyminerals wrote:
> YAML is the most risky, since it has a high chance to alienate 
> a sizeable amount of potential users.

In my humble opinion it’s an awful format to write for users that 
only come in contact with it occasionally.

It’s easy enough to understand when reading it, but writing it is 
another story.

I don’t think switching to YAML will make DUB more accessible.
It’s too hard to get right without experience and DUB isn’t worth 
learning YAML when you have no other uses for it.

DUB recipes should be fun to write or they’ll needlessly end up 
low quality, i.e. people not bothering to create configurations, 
sub-packages in cases where they would make sense. If I have to 
lookup YAML specifics first to deploy advanced features, I will 
probably just not use them so I can get away (with not looking 
deeper into YAML than absolutely necessary).

Furthermore, the acceptance of DUB in the community is already 
noticeably less than it should be. Will the introduction of YAML 
improve this? Or will it cause a further hit to the acceptance?