toYaml template function and indentation

[vbrand1984]

I've noticed that the toYaml function puts 4 spaces per indentation level in its resulting yaml document. Though it doesn't go against the yaml specification (and chezmoi's toYaml inserts indentations correctly), but the standard de-facto is 2 spaces per nested level, and I wonder if this may cause issues when combining manually generated yaml text with template-generated fragments (currently I'm tinkering with Ansible and trying to manage its configuration with chezmoi).

[bradenhilton]

We'd have to use Encoder.SetIndent.

In cases where consistent formatting is important, it's probably better to just round-trip the file with fromYaml | toYaml where possible.

[halostatue]

I don't think that I’ve used toYaml heavily before, but it might be worth changing the default indentation to 2 instead of 4, as it is typical to use 2 spaces for indentation in YAML.

[twpayne]

Changing the default will break existing code which relies on the current behavior. Adding an extra optional argument to toYaml will break template code that uses pipelines.

I don't think there's any standard indent in YAML. I can't find any mention of any in the specification. chezmoi uses the default indentation used by gopkg.in/yaml.v3.

I think the only solution is to add a new toYamlWithIndent template function that takes the indentation level as an argument.

Thoughts?

[halostatue]

No, there's no standard indent, but I think that most projects use two space indents. Adding toYamlWithIndent would sort of work with the corresponding sprig function toJsonPretty (or is it toPrettyJson).

[twpayne]

I've added toYamlWithIndent in #3875. Reviews appreciated.

[bradenhilton]

I think it's worth adding overall, but yaml.v3 doesn't appear to offer a way to change the indentation for arrays etc., so there is still a potential for inconsistent formatting when working with only part of a file.

Both of these are valid YAML:

foos:
- bar
- baz

foos:
  - bar
  - baz

I still think the best catch-all solution is to round-trip the formatting.