Given that a line is always a `key: value` pair, is a `dict` system easier here? You can do:

```python
ret = {}
for line in output:
    key, value = line.split(":", 1)
    if key:
        ret[key] = value.strip()
return ret
```
(Alternatively, `rose.config.ConfigLoader(char_assign=":").load` will parse the content for you into a `rose.config.ConfigNode`, but you will need `output` to be a file handle.)