Consider switching to StrictYAML

[crdoconnor]

Hi, big fan of this package, been using it for a while.

I'm an author of this package https://github.com/crdoconnor/strictyaml which is a yaml parser, validator and emitter that parses a stripped down version of the yaml specification. Note that it does not implement the YAML 2.0 specification, but tries to parse according to how people tend to believe YAML behaves rather than how it actually does. There's a lot of detail about what it does and why on the website: https://hitchdev.com/strictyaml/#design-justifications

I think this package might help prevent a few of the kinds of issues you've had:

• Fail gracefully on invalid YAML configuration #502 -- strictyaml has schemas built in, so validating the yaml would be pretty trivial, and it strives to give clear error messages with line numbers.

• Fails to install via pip3 and Python 3.7.0 on macOS 10.13.5 #399 -- which is the same/very similar to an issue I personally experienced trying to install tmuxp because of pyyaml.

• maybe import can be more convenient #194 -- strictyaml does not allow typing inside YAML files.

This is also partly inspired by a new testing feature I'm working on, whereby I automatically regression test any code changes in downstream packages to ensure that nothing breaks. I have a few other projects which I'd like to start running tests against like this but I think also that tmuxp would be a good candidate for this.

If you want, I can raise a pull request for this, but I'd like to hear your opinions first.

[tony]

Sounds fair to me!

If redhat/freebsd/debian/ubuntu have packages, it'd make the transition easier.

Kaptan and vcspull would also benefit from the change

[rightaway]

Also an archlinux official package, since tmuxp is currently in the official archlinux repositories and not the AUR.

[tony]

Reiterating that I am +1 on this.

When it comes to parsers, my stance is:

• In future releases I am going to add the ability to plug in config parsers
• I am willing to add this officially via extra, e.g. tmuxp[strictyaml]

Same goes for tmuxp[toml] (FYI python 3.11 seems like it'll have toml out of the box via PEP 680)

[crdoconnor]

Oh, that's great. Please do let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

[tony]

@crdoconnor Thank you! 🙌 I will reach out in this thread when:

a. we make configuration parsers pluggable #769

This will likely make it in before 2.0 fyi, as long as existing stuff doesn't break :)
b. I make PR with strictyaml in it (to make sure our current tests work)

Note to self, this looks good packaging wise: https://repology.org/project/python:strictyaml/versions

What I'm scared of: How will existing user configs react to the strictness of https://hitchdev.com/strictyaml/features-removed/