PMpmig·Jun 26, 2024
So whats your take on https://github.com/stripe/skycfg do you also have experience with it?
In Show HN: Glasskube – Open Source Kubernetes Package Manager, alternative to Helmstripe
skycfg
Go2018–2024
stripe / skycfg
skycfg
Skycfg is an extension library for the Starlark language that adds support for constructing Protocol Buffer messages.
9Distinct people
17Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
676GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Skycfg is an extension library for the Starlark language that adds support for constructing Protocol Buffer messages.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- cruise-automation/isopod · linked in 4 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year17 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2018-12-03 15:12:14 UTC to 2024-06-26 08:46:27 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
17 sources> So something like starlark with types.
this exists for k8s[0]. there have been other users based on the same library[1], I heard reddit did something similar internally
[0] - https://github.com/cruise-automation/isopod
[1] - https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
In Show HN: Glasskube – Open Source Kubernetes Package Manager, alternative to HelmI can definitely sympathize here - in every context, just straight JSON/YAML configuration seems never expressive enough, but the tooling created in response always seems to come with sharp edges.
Here are some of the things I appreciate about Jsonnet:
- It evals to JSON, so even though the semantics of the language are confusing, it is reasonably easy to eval and iterate on some Jsonnet until it emits what one is expecting - and after that, it's easy to create some validation tests so that regressions don't occur.
- It takes advantage of the fact that JSON is a lowest-common-denominator for many data serialization formats. YAML is technically a superset of JSON, so valid JSON is also valid YAML. Proto3 messages have a canonical JSON representation, so JSON can also adhere to protobuf schemas. This covers most "serialized data structure"
Read the rest
use-cases I typically encounter (TOML and HCL are outliers, but many tools that accept those also accept equivalent JSON). This means that with a little bit of build-tool duct-taping, Jsonnet can be used to generate configurations for a wide variety of tooling.
- Jsonnet is itself a superset of JSON - so those more willing to write verbose JSON than learn Jsonnet can still write JSON that someone else can import/use elsewhere. Using Jsonnet does not preclude falling back to JSON.
- The tooling works well - installing the Jsonnet VSCode plugin brings in a code formatter that does an excellent job, and rules_jsonnet[0] provides good bazel integration, if that's your thing.
I'm excited about Jsonnet because now as long as other tool authors decide to consume JSON, I can more easily abstract away their verbosity without writing a purpose-built tool (looking at you, Kubernetes) without resorting to text templating (ahem Helm). Jsonnet might just be my "one JSON-generation language to rule them all"!
---
Though if Starlark is your thing, do checkout out skycfg[1]
[0] - https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jsonnet
[1] - https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
Can you say more about what GCL does better than all of the open source ones?
Anecdotally, I've heard a lot of GCL horror stories, and many Xooglers have chosen to create things like Jsonnet or Skycfg (https://github.com/stripe/skycfg) instead.
In The Dhall Configuration LanguageI have - https://github.com/cruise-automation/isopod and more generally with https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
In YAML: It's Time to Move OnIf you’re looking at other solutions check out https://github.com/stripe/skycfg It works with Envoy and lots of other things that support protobuf configs
In Migrating Millions of Concurrent WebSockets to EnvoyYou may be interested in https://github.com/stripe/skycfg, which we use to generate Kubernetes resources using its native Protobuf data model.
In A better Kubernetes from the ground up> the "turing-complete-by-design" config files, written in Python
Funny you mention this, check out what is effectively this but for Kubernetes:
https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
In Kubernetes YAML Generator> I really wish they had both just used "a real programming language" right from the start
There are currently several options, like https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
> Why are so few configuration languages not backed by a real language?
There are tons of tools that work with YAML/JSON but I imagine you mean more like a first-class citizen programming language specific or good at writing static configuration. The other side of the coin is that configuration in many cases have a different audience than programmers (for ex, end users or operations team) and it's a good option to have static configuration key=value than any human can (more or less) read easily without having to run programming code in your head. Plus programming, besides being harder to read and share, introduces bugs. So I suppose the preference between code writing config
Read the rest
uration and stand-alone configuration depends on who the consumer is and how complex the configuration is.
For kubernetes thats absolutely true and I think more people should do that (disclaimer I work with this https://github.com/stripe/skycfg daily). I think it actually would be easier for people to understand the k8s system if they did.
But, yaml is now everywhere in the ops space. Config management systems use it, metrics systems use it, its the defacto configuration format right now and that is unfortunate cause its bad.
In Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?If you're willing to relax the "Turing-complete" part, and do a bit of final assembly yourself, you might try https://github.com/stripe/skycfg which uses the Python-like Starlark language.
Cruise built a more complex DSL on top of it: https://github.com/cruise-automation/isopod
In Can We Just Cut to Infrastructure-as-Declarative-Code?We’ve been using starlark for kubernetes configs at my prev gig and I quite liked it. Open-sourced some of that stuff as https://github.com/cruise-automation/isopod (which is based on https://github.com/stripe/skycfg). I hear stripe are also using their thing with terraform although not sure to which extent.
In A developer goes to a DevOps conferenceYeah client-go typed clientsets are codegened. It would be really labor intensive (and error prone) to write go code for every deployment.
May I suggest a middle ground =) github.com/stripe/skycfg (checkout //_examples/k8s that I added)
In Kustomize – Templating in KubernetesHave you looked at the work being done by stripe on skycfg? https://github.com/stripe/skycfg has the advantage of preserving protobuf message types as they're passed, so you get type checking.
In In Defense of YAMLRe configuration: ksonnet is an option (although I personally find jsonnet a “lipstick on a pig” kind of solution).
There’s some work going on to have something more user-friendly (think Google’s Piccolo) - https://github.com/stripe/skycfg (disclaimer - I contributed to this project)
In Kubernetes Failure StoriesShowing the 15 most recent of 17 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.