Support yaml/json

[hmemcpy]

Opening this issue to get the discussion going -- xml is very verbose. Many project nowadays opt for configuring using YAML or json.
It would be great to have support for those in msbuild.

[ChaseFlorell]

I don't believe yaml is in fact markup, but I'm all for json... Much clearer.

[arbing]

json +1

[nilemarbarcelos]

json +1 here

[WellMafra]

json +1²

[arthrp]

JSON would be totally in spirit of the "new" .NET, +1

[RichiCoder1]

I'd be curious how a json formatted MSBuild project file would play with AspNet vNext's project.json.

[shahid-pk]

json support will be great of course after getting msbuild xplat

[hmemcpy]

One important bit about json config is the (lack of) comments,which are useful in a build configuration. How would json support that?

[arthrp]

@hmemcpy the fact that official JSON standard doesn't support comments doesn't mean a thing. JS comments can be easily handled by a JSON parser.It doesn't need to be "Crockford's valid JSON", you know.

[akoeplinger]

I think it would be helpful if someone converted an existing MSBuild solution (e.g. this repo) to json so we can see how it looks like :)

[AndyGerlicher]

Without being for or against this suggestion, the main thing we would need to keep in mind is alignment with Visual Studio and the project files. It's something we will definitely bring up for Visual Studio vNext, but I'm not sure that we would take a change right now for the current MSBuild incarnation as it would likely be fairly substantial.

[leppie]

👎

Unless someone plans to write a JSON 'schema validator' this will not happen. XML has all that built in.

A better choice would be some JSON to MsBuild XML preprocessor task. Well anyone can do that, it does not have to be built into MsBuild.

[RichiCoder1]

@leppie
JSON Schema and Schema validation is a thing. See ASP.NET's project.json:
https://github.com/aspnet/Home/wiki/Project.json-file

[skizzerz]

YAML is a superset of JSON, so I'd rather see support for YAML (which would thus automatically include JSON support unless YAML-specific features like multiple documents in a single file are required). YAML is also a lot easier to hand-modify in case that matters for people (comes up for me very occasionally where I need to manually edit a .csproj because I accidentally did something derpy in VS that I couldn't fully revert).

[ChaseFlorell]

@darrelmiller, I know what it means, but it's not really 'markup'. Just my opinion, but I'm not a fan. Invisible characters have no place as deliminators. Json support on the other hand aligns nicely with the vnext direction.

Also, extra data inside json wouldn't affect its purpose, so comments can easily just be extra data. When parsed, comments show up as properties.

{"_comment":"I'm a comment. "}