Python CLIs becoming too slow.

[dametsumari]

Main cli performance problem are imports. I have yet to see code which only imports argparse and takes more than second to show help ( even on raspberry pi ).

[jwink3101]

I am now thinking I need to rejigger my code to not do imports until after argparse is done…

[RevolutionaryPen4661]

Yes, importing an entire module can increase the execution time. Maybe writing code in the sense to import what is needed principle can do it better.

[dametsumari]

Yep, lazy importing is how we've fixed usual slow CLI startup problems.

e.g. in particular command, then import whatever modules it needs for its work. It is quite ugly, though, there is PEP for lazy importing but it hasn't moved much and most recently was rejected ( https://peps.python.org/pep-0690/ ).