---
id: ruyaml
version: "0.91.0"
license: MIT license
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# ruyaml — ruyaml is a fork of ruamel.yaml

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 1.5M/mo

## What it is and what it does

ruyaml is a maintained fork of ruamel.yaml that parses and serializes YAML while preserving comments, blank lines, and formatting during round-trip operations. It's designed to solve the problem of YAML libraries that lose structural metadata when loading and re-saving files—critical for configuration management, templating, and any workflow where human-readable YAML structure matters.

The package provides a YAML() class-based API (replacing deprecated top-level functions) and depends only on distro and setuptools. It supports Python 3.6 through 3.10 and is actively maintained by the pycontribs community to ensure long-term stability. The fork was created to secure the library's future by distributing maintenance responsibilities.

Use it for:

- Editing and updating configuration files while preserving comments and formatting for human readability
- Building YAML-based templating or code generation systems that need to maintain structural integrity
- Loading YAML data with comments and re-serializing it without losing metadata for documentation or audit trails
- Configuration management tools that must preserve user comments and formatting across updates
- Parsing structured YAML documents where comment preservation is required for compliance or clarity

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

ruyaml is a YAML parser and serializer that preserves comments, formatting, and structure during round-trip load/dump cycles, designed as a maintained fork of ruamel.yaml.

Yes, with conditions. ruyaml is production-stable (MIT license, actively maintained repository, no known vulnerabilities, low install friction) and solves a real problem that standard YAML libraries don't—preserving comments and formatting. However, the last PyPI release was December 2021 despite recent repository commits; verify that the version available on PyPI meets your needs, or consider pinning to a specific version if you depend on recent fixes.

## Install

pip install ruyaml
uv add ruyaml
poetry add ruyaml

## Installing ruyaml

Before you install: Low install friction with only two runtime dependencies (distro and setuptools). The package is actively maintained with recent commits and a stable release history, though the last PyPI release was in December 2021 despite ongoing repository activity.

License in practice: MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in both open-source and proprietary projects with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart:

pip install ruyaml

import ruyaml as yaml

yaml_obj = yaml.YAML()
data = yaml_obj.load(open('config.yaml'))
yaml_obj.dump(data, open('output.yaml', 'w'))

Requires Python 3.6 or later; the old top-level functions (load, dump, safe_load, etc.) are deprecated—use YAML() instance methods instead.

Verify before relying:

- Current maintenance status relative to the original ruamel.yaml—whether ruyaml is actively receiving feature parity updates
- Specific performance characteristics compared to ruamel.yaml or PyYAML for large YAML files
- Whether the package is suitable for production use given the last PyPI release was December 2021

## Package facts

- License: MIT license (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 1.5M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

yaml parser with comments, round-trip yaml serialization, preserve yaml formatting, yaml with comment preservation, ruamel.yaml fork, structured yaml processing, yaml configuration parsing, yaml-parsing, comment-preservation, configuration-management

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/ruyaml) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/ruyaml/)