Templates must be able to reference other templates (hierarchal templates)

[kwatsen]

Requirements

This requirement is to enable templates to themselves reference other template(s).

Note: whether a template can reference one temaplate or a list of templates is addressed in #1.

Non-Requirements

Implicit in this requirement is a need to define a rule for how overlaps/collisions are handled. Though a common approach/understanding is to allow local-overrides, this requirement does NOT pick what approach may be used, leaving that decision to be made elsewhere.

[jsterne]

This feels overly complex to me. Being able to compose a config using multiple templates is good (issue #1), and same with being able to apply at various schema nodes (issue #9) and probably good enough for most use cases of templates.

[robertjwills]

I think this adds complexity for several reasons:

• Making sure templates don't reference each other in a circular way
• When combined with issue #1, there are now two ways that the contents of templates can collide
• Needing to specify and implement validation for when a referenced template doesn't exist. Of course this is already the case, but now we have an extra situation where one template may reference another that doesn't exist.

I agree with Jason that #1 and #9 are good enough for most use cases of templates.