Format for manifests (confused between JSON and YAML)

[ethindp]

I am debating integrating automatic generating of winget package manifests into a game engine that I am a contributor to. It's not a "top priority" item, and we're still in the "how might we go about this if it were to be done" stage, but poking around at the information available I'm quite confused. The documentation provides JSON schemas for all required files of a manifest, yet requires that all manifests be YAML from what I can tell, and I can't tell if JSON manifests would be accepted or not. I would like to auto-generate the code that would work with the manifests via the JSON schemas using quicktype or a similar tool, which is why I am raising this question, because tools such as Quicktype generate code for working with JSON, not YAML. So, would a JSON manifest be accepted or would I need to either hand-code the manifest generation or postprocess the JSON into YAML?

[Trenly]

Only YAML manifests are accepted in the community repo. Once you have one version of the manifest in the repo, it's quite easy to automate the submission process by integrating WinGet Create into your CI/CD process.

You can also use WinGet Create to generate the first manifest for submission, or use some of the other tools for manifest creation like the YamlCreate script or Komac

[ethindp]

@Trenly Ah, thank you, a bit saddening since I was goign to have our engine allow you to generate the manifest data when bundling your game/preparing it for distribution. Not just used in CI/CD (but thanks for the tip about integrating that, will be useful). So being able to just generate a JSON manifest and then being able to go "Okay, submit this" would've been pretty nice, but thank you for clearing up the confusion.