Phyles is a set of somewhat eclectic functions that makes the implementation of utilities (little programs that can be controlled by config files) easier. It started as a mass of boilerplate that I would copy into almost every utility I wrote. I finally decided to consolidate this code into a package and add some schema-based validation of config files and to document it fully.
Phyles provides support for YAML-based config files as well as a means for validating the config files. Phyles also provides several facilities for making utilities more user friendly, including automatically generated banners, automatically documented configuration templates, and graceful recovery from configuration errors.
The accompanying tutorial shows how phyles assists in turning one-off python scripts into robust packages worthy of distribution, or at least worthy of a permanent place in one’s work-flow.
Phyles can be obtained at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/phyles/.