Why is yaml configuration deprecated?

[momocode-de]

Hi @JanPietrzyk ,

I have a question:

Why is the yaml configuration format deprecated and removed in 2.0? I just found your blog post from 2016 where you wrote this:

[...] The verbosity of XML makes reading even the simplest statements a pain.

[...] This all meant for us that all XML based build tools [...] were no longer an option

So I wonder why you have decided to again use XML and not YAML anymore.

[JanPietrzyk]

Hi, thank you for your question. The answer is basically: "This was 4 years ago" :)

1. Times have changed. Newer IDE's can effectively read the DTD, validate it and offer autocompletion. This was not the case when we still were doing ANT.
2. I keep forgetting or misspelling YAML configuration. XML solves this effectively by providing deeper validation options.
3. The additional dimension of key, value and attribute comes in handy with more advanced features. I would argue that XML while beeing verbose is not less readable if it's not too complex.

There is currently no 2.0 release planed and might not happen for a very long time. Basically the deprecation frees me from having to expand the YAML schema. There are things planed where a simple key/value relation will not be enough. And that is where this move will hopefully pay of.

Let me now ask you: Is threatening to remove YAML a problem? We will certainly keep it for the foreseeable future.