iniconfig

iniconfig lives up to its "brain-dead simple" description, but that simplicity comes at a cost. The API is straightforward—instantiate IniConfig with a file path or string, access sections and values—but there's virtually no error handling guidance. When parsing fails, you get generic exceptions that don't help you locate the problematic line in your config file.

The library has zero type hints, making IDE autocompletion nearly useless. You're constantly referring back to the sparse documentation to remember whether you need .sections, .get(), or bracket notation. The docs are a single README with basic examples, no API reference, and no discussion of edge cases like duplicate keys, encoding issues, or multiline values.

For quick scripts or internal tooling where configs are simple and controlled, it works fine. But for any production application or library, you'll quickly miss features like validation, better error messages, type safety, and proper documentation. The standard library's configparser offers significantly better DX with only marginally more complexity.

iniconfig delivers on its "brain-dead simple" promise, but that simplicity comes with significant tradeoffs. The API is straightforward—instantiate IniConfig with a file path and access sections/keys—but there's virtually no type hinting support, making IDE autocompletion nearly useless. You're essentially working with string dictionaries with minimal guardrails.

Error messages are terse to the point of being unhelpful. When parsing fails, you get bare exceptions without context about line numbers or what went wrong. The documentation is sparse—basically just the README with a few examples. There's no guidance on edge cases like duplicate keys, encoding issues, or escaping special characters. In practice, you'll spend time experimenting to understand behavior that should be documented.

For simple configuration needs where you control the INI format completely, it works fine. But for anything beyond basic key-value retrieval, you'll quickly hit limitations. No built-in validation, no schema support, no comment preservation for round-tripping. Consider configparser from the standard library for production use—it's more feature-complete and equally simple.

iniconfig delivers exactly what it promises: a brain-dead simple INI parser with minimal dependencies. The API is straightforward - you call IniConfig(filename) and access sections/keys through dictionary-like syntax. It took me about 10 minutes to get basic parsing working, which is good. However, the simplicity comes at a cost.

The biggest pain point is the sparse documentation and lack of examples. The GitHub repo has a basic README, but there's almost no guidance on edge cases or best practices. When you hit issues, you're largely on your own - Stack Overflow has virtually no questions about it, and GitHub issues are sparse. Error messages are minimal at best, so debugging parsing problems means digging through your config file manually.

For day-to-day use, it handles basic INI files fine, but the moment you need type coercion, defaults, validation, or interpolation, you'll be writing your own wrapper code. It's usable for simple config files where you don't mind doing string-to-type conversions yourself, but configparser from the standard library offers much more functionality without additional dependencies.