What is configglue?

configglue is a library that glues together Python’s optparse.OptionParser and
ConfigParser.ConfigParser, so that you don’t have to repeat yourself when you
want to export the same options to a configuration file and a commandline
interface.

The main features of configglue are:

• ini-style configuration files
• schema-based configuration
• commandline integration
• configuration validation

Why would I want to use configglue?

Some of the benefits of using configglue are that it allows you to:

• separate configuration declaration (which options are available) from
  definition (what value does each option take)
• validate configuration files (there are no required options missing, prevent
  typos in option names, assert each option value is of the correct type)
• use standards-compatible configuration files (standard ini-files)
• use standard types out of the box (integer, string, bool, tuple, list, dict)
• create your own custom types beyond what’s provided in the library
• easily support commandline integration
• override options locally by using several configuration files (useful for
  separating configuration files for different environments)

configglue and django-configglue are already available in Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick), so they can be installed via apt-get. configglue should already be installed if you have the desktop edition, as it’s being used by Ubuntu One’s client.

Who else is using configglue?

• Ubuntu Pay
• Ubuntu Software Center
• Ubuntu Single Sign On
• Ubuntu One

Got curious?

You can find a quickstart guide for configglue on
http://packages.python.org/configglue and you can get its code at
http://launchpad.net/configglue.

As an additional bonus, there is another project called django-configglue
which allows you to use all the benefits of configglue on your Django
projects. You can find a quickstart guide for django-configglue on
http://packages.python.org/django-configglue and you can get its code at
http://launchpad.net/django-configglue.