Hi there!
First and foremost, no flame here. I have the feeling that when we talk about Yaml, complains are popping up and poisoning the original topic. I don’t want yet another talk about GUI vs Yaml, because mainly I don’t care. I use both, they both have their pros and cons. Spread the love!
Now about the main topic here. I installed UI Lovelace Minimalist and I like it. I have a dev background, and I’m more interested for the GUI to edit it with Yaml files. I would love to make some extra magic to my code before being interpreted by Home Assistan. Here is a small list of what I refer as magic:
- Counting unique
light.
entities in a subview to add a small counter of lights without having to maintain it explicitly - Functions! Templates! I mean easy templates, not the one that requires you to refresh the yaml and refresh your browser to see that you gave the wrong type in the yaml.
- Make some query to the HomeAssistant API to find some specific sensor within an area. Why not actually generating all the views from something generic (what does actually Mushroom Strategy Dashboard)
The fact is I hate Yaml. I’ll not enumerate everything I dislike about it but mainly the missing strong type policy makes templating a real pain unless we understand how lovelace cards are designed.
But I don’t think Home Assistant should drop Yaml support for some nerds like me, and I’m so happy to have such an accessible software in OpenSource. Again, spread the love like you say
That’s why I was wondering about a community based Dhall or Nickel support. The best of both words: no dev from the HomeAssistant core team to support it since it transcompiles in Yaml, and the dev way available for everybody that opts in for.
I can’t find any proper mention in the discourse. Now the public talk is open for its implementation.
What do you think about it?
PS: It’s funny, because I never used Dhall or Nickel. I am a big fan of Nix though. But isn’t HomeAssistant configuration a perfect example of what these languages are designed for?