---
id: yaml-config
version: "0.1.5"
license: unclear
license_treatment: unclear
maintenance: abandoned
---

# yaml-config — Python client for reading yaml based config files

License: unclear · Maintenance: abandoned · Downloads: 2.2M/mo

## What it is and what it does

yaml-config provides a simple Config class that wraps PyYAML to load and retrieve configuration variables from YAML files. You subclass it to define default file paths and configuration roots, then instantiate and call get() to retrieve values with optional defaults. It supports environment variable overrides through a configurable prefix (e.g., GBR_CONFIG_ROOT, GBR_CONFIG_DIR) to point to config file locations.

The package is designed for straightforward YAML-based configuration management in Python applications. It handles basic use cases like loading a config file once at startup and retrieving typed values throughout your application, but it is no longer maintained—the last release was in June 2020, and there have been no updates since.

Use it for:

- Load application settings from a YAML file at startup and retrieve them throughout the app lifecycle.
- Override config file paths via environment variables in containerized or multi-environment deployments.
- Subclass Config to define application-specific defaults and configuration roots in a single place.
- Migrate legacy applications from hardcoded or ad-hoc config parsing to a structured YAML-based approach.

## Worth the install?

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

Reads configuration from YAML files and provides a Config class to retrieve configuration variables, with support for environment variable overrides and custom defaults.

No. The package is abandoned (last release June 2020, no commits since), and its license status is unclear. For new projects, use a maintained alternative like python-dotenv, pydantic-settings, or dynaconf. Only consider it if you are maintaining legacy code that already depends on it and cannot migrate.

## Install

pip install yaml-config
uv add yaml-config
poetry add yaml-config

## Installing yaml-config

Before you install: Low install friction with only two runtime dependencies (PyYAML and typing). However, the package is abandoned—last release was 2020-06-22, over four years ago, with no recent maintenance activity.

License in practice: License treatment is unclear; the description mentions MIT licensing but the metadata lacks a formal SPDX identifier or raw license string, creating ambiguity about actual license terms.

Quickstart:

pip install yaml-config

from yaml_config import Config

class MyConfig(Config):
    default_file = 'config.yaml'

config = MyConfig()
value = config.get('key', default='fallback')

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package works reliably with Python versions beyond 3.8 despite being abandoned since 2020.
- Whether PyYAML dependency updates have introduced breaking changes to the package's behavior.

## Package facts

- License: not declared (unclear)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: abandoned
- Downloads: 2.2M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

yaml config file reader, python yaml configuration, config management yaml, environment variable config, yaml settings loader, configuration from yaml files, config-management, abandoned

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