Many applications and services rely on configuration data to behave according to a set of specific needs.

The standard library gives us ConfigParser, ArgumentParser and os.environ used for easy configuration via plaintext configuration files, command line arguments and environment variables, but they don't come with batteries included to integrate with each other.

OpenStack Common Libraries (Oslo) has an enhanced alternative called oslo.config with support to config files, command line arguments, environment, option deprecation, and much more. With the recent addition of source drivers feature, it is also possible to increase the security of config values storing them in a safer place like a secret manager. Using oslo.config over the standard library options is an easy way to achieve flexibility and also become compliant with security matters.