gistfile1.txt

So I think that we're breaking an important principle here... that config should return the data in an identical format to what you provided. At Barcelona @merlinofchaos said that CMI should be a dumb as possible and I think that here we are breaking that maxim.

Just because FAPI returns everything as strings is not a reason to go ahead here. We can leave all the simple config as strings if we want or we can use the schema (if available) to save typed config. But config entities should be allowed to save their data in the types stored on the object.