We have a mini default config (if you remember from a previous discussion we had) that actually uses the second form you suggested.
I wrote a small "fixup" script that combines this default with the one generated by clearml-init , and it simply does:
def_config = ConfigFactory.parse_file(DEF_CLEARML_CONF, resolve=False) new_config = ConfigFactory.parse_file(new_config_file, resolve=False) updated_new_config = ConfigTree.merge_configs(new_config, def_config)