In this talk, we compare CUE and LIFE (actually a subset of these), two languages apparently far apart but which share some common roots.

We elaborate on the commonalities and differences between building CUE configurations and LIFE psi-terms by relying on basic examples as well as sketches of operational semantics, considering a subset of CUE including embedded values and duplicate field declarations. Depending on the example, the mapping between CUE and LIFE can be straightforward or reveal serious discrepancies.

We plan to further explore the commonalities and differences of these languages, in particular with respect to adding constraints to feature structures. It would also be worthwhile to look at some other languages based on typed feature structures to gain a better understanding of the design space. We conjecture that this understanding could lead to a theoretically-simpler configuration language, possibly extended with computational abilities.