Dhall Configuration Language Reviews and details

Social recommendations and mentions

• Any program can be a GitHub Actions shell

  I'll give a shot at some guiding principals: 1. Do not use yaml. All github action logic should be written in a language that compiles to yaml, for example dhall (https://dhall-lang.org/). Yaml is an awful language for programmers, and it's a worse language for non-programmers. It's good for no one. 2. To the greatest extent possible, do not use any actions which install things. For example, don't use... - Source: Hacker News / 22 days ago

• StrictYAML

  I'm a fan of anything that moves us away from stringly typed nonsense. See also Dhall (which can render to yaml). I like the idea but found the veneer broke a little too often and left me squinting at Haskell. https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago

• Some Programming Language Ideas

  I think you're asking for Starlark (https://starlark-lang.org), a language that strongly resembles Python but isn't Turing-complete, originally designed at Google for use in their build system. There's also Dhall (https://dhall-lang.org), which targets configuration use cases; I'm less familiar with it. One problem is that, while non-Turing-completeness can be helpful for maintainability, it's not really... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago

• 8 months of OCaml after 8 years of Haskell in production

  > Lambda calculus is as pure as can be, and also has terms that don't normalize. That is not considered a side effect. Many typed lambda calculi do normalise. You can also have a look https://dhall-lang.org/ for some pragmatic that normalises. > A better example of impurity in Haskell for pragmatic's sake is the trace function, that can be used to print debugging information from pure functions. Well, but that's... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago

• Thoughts on ThoughtWorks Radar 2024

  I was first turned onto Pkl during my Dhall Trough of Disillusionment phase (Dhall is cool, but man is it hard) by James Ward. It looked to be a language that had enough types to compile YAML/JSON configuration files wayyyy more safely. I’ve had enough YAML/JSON misconfigurations break production, that I started looking into ways to compile those problems away, and Dhall helped a lot, but the learning curve and... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago

• Adding algebraic data types to Nickel

  Dhall[1] also usually gets mentioned in the same sentence as CUE. As for Nickel, I have mixed feelings about it of the same kind as about ES6 classes and perhaps modules—we’re taking a simple language (an extremely simple one, in the case of Nix) and baking into it some stuff that the original had as a completely satisfactory library, in the name of discoverability resp. uniformity. Seems a bit sad and unnecessary... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago

• Primitive Recursive Functions for a Working Programmer

  Anyway, it is not a problem in practice that this kind of pathological function can be expressed, I just put a limit on the number of execution steps (a “gas limit”, or what the author calls “metered execution”). For keeping code simple, I think the fact that the built-in looping constructs are bounded, and recursion is awkward, are a good nudge, but in the end the most valuable tool is code review and applying... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago

• Scrapscript: A functional, content-addressable programming language

  Hello! This project looks very interesting. How would you compare it to Dhall, which seems to have similar aims? Is scrapscript Turing complete, or are there totality guarantees? https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago

• Power of Small Optimizations

  Agda doesn't need that restriction, as far as I know. And neither does Dhall. See https://dhall-lang.org/ Neither language is Turing complete. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

• Pkl, a Programming Language for Configuration

  Kubernetes config is a decent example. I had ChatGPT generate a representative silly example -- the content doesn't matter so much as the structure: https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a75ea61 Now consider 100s (if not 1000s) of such files. I haven't given Pkl an in depth look yet, but I can say that the Industry Standard™ of "simple YAML" + string substitution (with delicate, error prone... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

• Apple releases Pkl – onfiguration as code language

  Fail to see how this is any different than Dhall (https://dhall-lang.org/) other than it produces plists too. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

• Apple releases Pkl – onfiguration as code language

  Well, Dhall provides something between JSON and a Turing complete language that can make a lot of configuration much quicker to write, if you can hack the functional syntax. http://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

• Why the fuck are we templating YAML? (2019)

  What are your thoughts on: - https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• Why the fuck are we templating YAML? (2019)

  Throwing in a plug for https://dhall-lang.org/ > Dhall is a programmable configuration language that you can think of as: JSON + functions + types + imports. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• Why the fuck are we templating YAML? (2019)

  I agree, I think a language like dhall (https://dhall-lang.org/) strikes a good balance. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• Why the fuck are we templating YAML? (2019)

  Hey now. Your average Haskeller would simply recommend you replace YAML with Dhall. https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• Why the fuck are we templating YAML? (2019)

  Indeed why? However the conclusion I have is not to use JSON but to use a type safe configuration language that can express my intent much better making illegal states impossible. One example of such lang is Dhall. https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• Is Htmx Just Another JavaScript Framework?

  There are underpowered languages / tools, that can only solve a problem for which they are intended poorly. But not all limited tools are like that. Say, eBPF is prominently not Turing-complete, which allows to guarantee that a eBPF program terminates, and even how soon. Still eBPF is hugely useful in its area. Or, say, regular expressions are limited to regular languages; in particular, they famously [1] cannot... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• NixOS has one fatal flaw

  This is how I think of Dhall as well, which I highly recommend. https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• Berry is a ultra-lightweight dynamically typed embedded scripting language

  I've been thinking along these lines but more 'strongly validated' than statically typed in the sense that you'd be better off being able to load the entire config and then produce a list of problems (and should be able to offer good editor support if done correctly). Though https://dhall-lang.org/ demonstrates that you can statically type quite a lot of configuration to great advantage, which appears to be... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

• What Is the Point of Decidability

  > Where practical is in the sense of an engineer (or in their terms, a CS practitioner), Configuration processing. E.g. I'd like my yamls to be decidable, though I'd settle for guaranteed to halt[1]. [1] https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago