Opened 12 years ago

Closed 10 years ago

Last modified 8 years ago

#19973 closed Cleanup/optimization (fixed)

Management commands migration to argparse

Reported by: José Luis Patiño Andrés Owned by: José Luis Patiño Andrés
Component: Core (Management commands) Version: dev
Severity: Normal Keywords: optparse, argparse, basecommand
Cc: hans@… Triage Stage: Ready for checkin
Has patch: yes Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description

The class BaseCommand, from which developers subclass their own management commands, is using the `optparse` module, which is actually deprecated.

If there are no important reasons to remain using the deprecated module, perhaps would be a good idea to port the BaseCommand code to the new module `argparse`, which will be used in Python 3.

Change History (20)

comment:1 by Ramiro Morales, 12 years ago

Easy pickings: unset
Triage Stage: UnreviewedAccepted

Good idea, has been discussed before (but there isn't anassociated ticket so thanks for opening this one).

But possible only once the minimal Python version supported by Django gets to the 2.7 level, such is the version where argparse got added to the stdlib.

comment:2 by José Luis Patiño Andrés, 12 years ago

Ok. I think that since I've took part some days ago in fixing the ticket #19877 and I've got familiar with that part, I can also try to fix this one. So it can be appended to Django master code when it reaches the 2.7 Python as minimal version supported.

comment:3 by José Luis Patiño Andrés, 12 years ago

Owner: changed from nobody to José Luis Patiño Andrés
Status: newassigned

comment:4 by Carl Meyer, 12 years ago

We'll need to provide a deprecation path and migration strategy for authors of custom management commands, since optparse is exposed directly to them via the definition of additional options for a custom command.

comment:5 by Hans Andersen, 11 years ago

Cc: hans@… added

comment:6 by Marc Tamlyn, 11 years ago

We are now able to do this as Django master is 2.7 only. I'm not having many great ideas about how to support both at once, my instinct says we'll need to do something like providing a flag on the Command instance to say "use_argpase" instead. Even this isn't clear in terms of how it would work.

Then again, there is no planned removal date for optparse (http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0389/#deprecation-of-optparse) so it's not really urgent.

comment:7 by Claude Paroz, 11 years ago

Before starting with the implementation, there is a design decision to make. argparse doesn't provide the same declarative syntax that optparse used to provide with make_option. I see two main ways to go forward:

  1. Keep declarative syntax and mostly the same Command API that we have now. Instead of importing make_option from optparse, we would import it from a Django-provided utility, optionally renaming it make_argument. Internally, this would only build a list of parameters that we would then pass to add_argument calls in create_parser.
    Advantages: nicer declarative syntax, less changes for custom command writers (and accessorily easier for call_command to get default values without instantiating the parser)
  1. Depart from the current declarative syntax and change the documentation about adding options for custom commands, basically instructing to subclass create_parser (or more probably create a new subclassable method BaseCommand.add_arguments(self, parser)) and to add arguments by calling parser.add_argument(<params>).
    Advantages: closer approach to standard Python

comment:8 by Jerome Leclanche, 11 years ago

So on Pootle we've been working on moving away from optparse in all our backend scripts but due to the dependency django has on optparse for specifically this, we are forced to use both optparse and argparse in the code which makes kittens cry.

@claudep I would go with option 2. The advantage here is that it is much more powerful right out of the box. Subcommands would create their own parser and would be able to inherit the parent parser simply by calling super(). This allows easy creation of things such as subcommands and such.

Being declarative is nice in principle but doesn't really work out for argument parsing - there is a reason python changed the logic there.

Are you planning to work on this bug? I would love to help, FWIW.

comment:9 by Claude Paroz, 11 years ago

Thanks Adys for your input. Feel free to start hacking on it, and share your work.

comment:10 by Claude Paroz, 10 years ago

@Adys, I made some progress on this issue. If you have also worked on this, we might share our work, otherwise just wait that my branch is in a publishable state...

comment:11 by Claude Paroz <claude@…>, 10 years ago

In 96e4b52ab2c6fae3e46a197d44c42cb6ebde7d9c:

Converted Django scripts to argparse

Refs #19973.

comment:12 by Claude Paroz, 10 years ago

Has patch: set

Here is the pull request with my work so far: https://github.com/django/django/pull/2780

Comments welcome.

comment:13 by Tim Graham, 10 years ago

Triage Stage: AcceptedReady for checkin

comment:14 by Tim Graham, 10 years ago

Claude, do you know if this will obsolete #11407?

comment:15 by Claude Paroz, 10 years ago

Hopefully, yes, but in any case, I'll revisit #11407 after committing this one.

comment:16 by Claude Paroz, 10 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: assignedclosed

Fixed in:

comment:17 by Claude Paroz <claude@…>, 10 years ago

In 5949c2118d7cc7cffe86cd9db1820b186b88bfc0:

Restored command error behavior when called from command line

Refs #19973.

comment:18 by Tim Graham <timograham@…>, 9 years ago

In 6a70cb53:

Refs #19973 -- Removed optparse support in management commands per deprecation timeline.

comment:19 by Tim Graham <timograham@…>, 8 years ago

In ccd5a23f:

Fixed #27000 -- Removed BaseCommand.usage() per deprecation timeline (refs #19973).

comment:20 by Tim Graham <timograham@…>, 8 years ago

In 7dd8e53c:

[1.10.x] Fixed #27000 -- Removed BaseCommand.usage() per deprecation timeline (refs #19973).

Backport of ccd5a23fba91e66656bb19b60bb6d737cab728f5 from master

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