Earlier today I was looking for a Saltstack mode for emacs. Couldn't find one, so I posted the question_ on Stack overflow. Somebody had a good suggestion about using yaml-mode because a Sublime Text implementation_ appeared to be taking this approach.Another person thought that Saltstack's use of jinja templates would make an emacs mode easy enough to configure. These were both helpful ideas so I wanted to implement parts of each.
After looking around, I found that someone_ had configured an emacs mode for a similar situation. They needed to combine HTML and Python to use Mako_ templates for a project not involving Saltstack. Since Edx uses_ Mako templates instead of jinja_ in their Django_ site_, Mako seemed like a good alternative to Jinja templates.
.. _question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27737557 .. _implementation: https://github.com/saltstack/sublime-text/blob/master/YAML.sublime-settings .. _someone: http://zwass.com/2011/07/01/installing-emacs-mmm-mako-mode/ .. _Mako: http://www.makotemplates.org/ .. _uses: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/edx-code/qlMvLjsqVaw/EeU7gh5hcfIJ .. _jinja: http://jinja.pocoo.org/ .. _Django: https://www.djangoproject.com/ .. _site: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform
I thought it was kind of rude for them to close the question on you. I came back browsing around today and see you've done this. Cool! I have been using mako for far longer than jinja, but the saltstack developers focus on jinja and leave mako out in the cold. If you plan to use salt-minion on windows, mako is not in the install and you will have to update it through a messy esky update routine. Even more important I came across this serious bug here: saltstack/salt#18775
I still use mako when rendering templates, but I was forced to use jinja to render the sls files. The saltstack developers also put a lot of work into plugging jinja with some very useful features for salt,
so it may not be much of a drawback to look at using jinja for rendering states and using mako for the other templates. Take a look through my github stuff and you'll find a lot of salt files scattered around.