# hashicorp/hcl

HCL is the HashiCorp configuration language.

Repository: https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/hcl
Language: Go
License: MPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: hcl, configuration-language, hashicorp, json
Last push: 2026-08-25T21:31:32+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 67/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4416, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 422, "gap_med": 233, "n_releases_24m": 2}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5798, forks 655 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:29.715263+00:00)

## What it is
HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) is a Go toolkit for building structured, human- and machine-friendly configuration languages, used by tools like Terraform. It provides a native syntax plus a JSON-based variant, with parsing, validation, and expression evaluation APIs.

## Use cases
- parse HCL configuration files in Go
- build a custom configuration language for a CLI tool
- decode config files into Go structs
- convert between HCL and JSON configuration
- evaluate expressions and variables in config files

## When to choose
- building devops or server tooling that needs a structured config format
- you want human-friendly config syntax with machine-readable JSON equivalent
- you need programmatic parsing and validation of Terraform-style files

## When to avoid
- you just need generic data serialization like JSON or YAML
- your project is not in Go or not using Go Modules (for HCL v2)
- you need a full programming language for configuration logic

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: parser, serialization, configuration-management, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, infrastructure-as-code
- platform: go, cross-platform
- tags: configuration-language, hashicorp, hcl, terraform, -variant, devops, configuration

## Member repositories
- hashicorp/hcl (main) score 67

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:29.715263+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:52:46.649468+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:29.715263+00:00, sha 17e7b8fe468f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.