Tobias Herp wrote: > *Before Python 2.7 reaches productivity stage*, IMNSHO the following > changes should be applied to argparse.py: > > - removal of the deprecation warnings > - removal of the default usage of '-v' > with the version information facility > > This is a very simple thing to do; I'd happily provide a patch. > (The only complicated task might be to make the unit tests reflect the > change; but for a start, 7 lines of the test_main function could be > dropped.) > > Just for the records, this is what optparse does: > - it defines -h and --help for the help (unless suppressed) > - it defines --version for the version (if version argument given) > This is how it should be (regarding the version, at least). > This is how the vast majority of *x tools looks like. > No reason to change this behaviour. > > What do you think?
I can see Steven's argument from an argparse point of view, but I think he is taking backwards compatibility to an unhealthy extreme. Deprecating a perfectly valid option *just* because someone might be relying on -v instead of -V as the shorthand for version? A phrase involving babies and bathwater comes to mind... I would be a lot happier if argparse as a standard library module just followed optparse's lead here (i.e. defined '--version' only and punted on the shorthand form). To deal with this in a backwards compatible way while remaining on the path to more conventional behaviour, I suggest the following: 1. For Python 2.7, deprecate *just* the "-v" default behaviour for the version. This means "--version" and "-v" will be set to invoke different actions when the version argument is supplied (the latter will trigger a deprecation warning if supplied, while the former will work normally). 2. For Python 3.2, don't create the "-v" shorthand at all (i.e. only create "--version"). Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia --------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
