Again not to take anything away from consul-template or pyconfd, but confd supports "real-time" updates from both consul and etcd, the watch support was added about 2 weeks ago on the master branch.

confd also has dry run support: https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/blob/master/docs/no... It was apart of the initial release of confd.

These distributed K/V stores are designed to offer a minimal feature set, and the watch support is a perfect way to deliver events to clients. While HTTP call backs would be nice, I think you have to draw the line somewhere. Since these types of systems, consul or etcd, sit at a critical point in the infrastructure lets keep them lean and focused. But that's just my opinion.