After some hints from folks on the Karaf list, I implemented a mutant cousin of fileinstall. It only does config admin, and it's role in life is to read yaml or json files, 'flatten' them, and push the results into config admin. My plan is for the things that use it to reconstruct the original object model by reversing the flattening, not to actually use keys like "foo.bar[3].baz' -- it includes an API that maps a CA Dictionary back to a JsonTree.
For expediency, I made it depend on NIO2 (not to mention Jackson) and DS. I doubt that folks will see this as generally applicable, but I carefully set it up with AL so that I could contribute it if there is a surprising (to me) groundswell of interest. I know that some karafers read this list, so I'm not going to bother to crosspost. I haven't written any automated tests yet. https://github.com/benson-basis/yaml-configuration-admin
