• we use maven as the standard for java projects
• maven delivers proven build infrastructure for years
• but: xml configs of maven are verbose
• and gradle is slow and a memory hog

• yaml pom is less verbose
• setup simple: just place a .mvn/ folder with extensions.xml in project root
• supported by idea without extra plugins
• supported by maven 3.5 (possibly earlier)
• build works out of the box as expected with pom.xml

• no suggestions in idea pom.yml
• must deal with strange exceptions when yaml does not match pom model

Caused by: org.yaml.snakeyaml.constructor.ConstructorException: Cannot create property=configuration for JavaBean=Plugin [org.apache.maven.plugins:java-compiler-plugin]
 in 'reader', line 23, column 7:
        - artifactId: java-compiler-plugin
          ^
org.yaml.snakeyaml.nodes.SequenceNode cannot be cast to org.yaml.snakeyaml.nodes.MappingNode
 in 'reader', line 26, column 9:
            - source: 8
            ^

• treat as standard maven project
• run mvn clean install on command line
• or import into idea (select pom.yml or folder)

• https://www.baeldung.com/maven-polyglot
• https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360003463819-IntelliJ-not-reading-pom-yml-in-maven-polyglot-project

• try more complex plugins
• convert existing project
• check syntax for plugin inheritance scopes
• try mixing pom.xml/pom.yml as parent/child

MIT