assets - Is there a way to alias/anchor an array in YAML?

Question

I'm using Jammit to package assets up for a Rails application and I have a few asset files that I'd like to be included in each of a few groups. For example, I'd like Sammy and its plugins to be in both my mobile and screen JS packages.

I've tried this:

sammy: &SAMMY
  - public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js
  - public/javascripts/vendor/sammy*.js

mobile:
  <<: *SAMMY
  - public/javascripts/something_else.js

and this:

mobile:
  - *SAMMY

but both put the Sammy JS files in a nested Array, which Jammit can't understand. Is there a syntax for including the elements of an Array directly in another Array?

NB: I realize that in this case there are only two elements in the SAMMY Array, so it wouldn't be too bad to give each an alias and reference both in each package. That's fine for this case, but quickly gets unmaintainable when there are five or ten elements that have a specific load order.

Answer 1

Closest solution I know of is this one:

sammy:
  - &SAMMY1
    public/javascripts/vendor/sammy.js
  - &SAMMY2
    public/javascripts/vendor/sammy*.js

mobile:
  - *SAMMY1
  - *SAMMY2
  - public/javascripts/something_else.js

Alternatively, as already suggested, flatten the nested lists in a code snippet.

Note: according to yaml-online-parser, your first suggestion is not a valid use of << (used to merge keys from two dictionaries. The anchor then has to point to another dictionary I believe.