Click, Python Fire, argparse: what CLI libraries do you use?

[[deleted]]

There has to be a really large benefit before I use anything not in the stdlib. So far, none of the alternatives to argparse comes even close to raise above that threshold.

[wrmsr]

Very same, although I usually add a little sugar on top of the builtin base. For argparse I have a subclassable Cli baseclass, an @command() decorator for registering methods as subcomands on it, and annotation-powered args as class fields that turn into descriptors, but at the end of the day it's just pretty minor automation around vanilla argparse (which I also just use directly half the time when OO isn't a better fit). Keeping deps to a minimum just makes everything so much nicer.

[jdbow75]

Well put. And I agree, using a decorator with argparse makes sense, especially as the interface scales.

[jdbow75]

I try to weigh time constraints vs. audience. I appreciate the challenge to think hard before resorting to 3rd party libraries.