Multiple people have raised concerns with having the schema definitions separated into one file per term. I found that structure easier to work with as I started adding terms to the schema, but that doesn't mean we have to stick with it in the long run. One proposal would be to consolidate all terms for each term type (metadata, suffix, datatype) into their own file.

I'd like to know how people feel about this.

Here are some potential blockers that came to mind:

• We currently use the filenames of metadata YAML files to support different definitions of the same fields (see EchoTime.yaml and EchoTime_fmap.yaml for an example). If all fields are in the same file, then we'll need some other way to support this behavior.
• Inherited fields are stored in files starting with an underscore (for example, _EEGCoordSys.yaml). It's probably not a problem when placing them in a single file, but I want to make sure everything still works that way.
• datatypes files have a very different structure than the metadata, suffixes, or columns (see [SCHEMA] Add TSV column files #827) files.
  • The closest I have to a solution for this is in [SCHEMA] Separate schema object definitions from rules #834, where I move most of the datatypes information to a new "rules" folder, and create new datatypes object files with just the names and definitions. We need to separate object definitions from rules anyway.

Some potential benefits:

• Fewer files to manage. Though it's the same amount of information of course.
• The schema loading code could be simplified if we don't need to walk through folders to load all files.

Tagging some folks who have expressed opinions on this or who I think might have an opinion: @erdalkaraca, @effigies, @yarikoptic, @CPernet, @Remi-Gau, and @Tokazama. Apologies to anyone I might have missed.