Yes but it is not easy to read (or write) and version control works less well with it than YAML. And having more complex features is part of what people disliked about XML in the first place.

Having sorted out several merge conflicts in Kubernetes configuration spaghetti, I disagree.

YAML is only simple on the surface.

If that exact same configuration were JSON or XML would it be easy to sort out? It seems obvious to me that it wouldn’t because the configuration itself is complex.

XML definitely, as it is structured, with schema validation.

Structure and schema validation are not typically something your VC cares about since it treats everything as text. So I'm not seeing why that resolves the problem.

Because it doesn't make it to your VC in the first place if it doesn't pass schema validation.

Except you were just talking about "merge conflicts..." two valid versions of the configuration don't necessarily stay valid when they get merged together.

Because a savy developer will validate their schema when sorting out merge conflicts across the whole configuration, instead of commiting a badly merged file that will fail starting up the Kubernetes cluster in the sea of YAML files.