Changelog

Version 0.31.2 (2024-01-24)

Bugs fixed:

broken support for Optional[List] (but not Optional[list]), a narrower case of the problem fixed earlier (issue #216).

Version 0.31.1 (2024-01-19)

Bugs fixed:

broken support for type alias List (issue #216).

Enhancements:

cleaned up the README, rearranged other documentation.

Version 0.31.0 (2023-12-30)

Breaking changes:

The typing hints introspection feature is automatically enabled for any command (function) which does not have any arguments specified via @arg decorator.

This means that, for example, the following function used to fail and now it will pass:
```
def main(count: int):
    assert isinstance(count, int)
```
This may lead to unexpected behaviour in some rare cases.
A small change in the legacy argument mapping policy BY_NAME_IF_HAS_DEFAULT concerning the order of variadic positional vs. keyword-only arguments.

The following function now results in main alpha [args ...] beta instead of main alpha beta [args ...]:
```
def main(alpha, *args, beta): ...
```
This does not concern the default name mapping policy. Even for the legacy one it’s an edge case which is extremely unlikely to appear in any real-life application.
Removed the previously deprecated decorator @expects_obj.

Enhancements:

Added experimental support for basic typing hints (issue #203)

The following hints are currently supported:
- str, int, float, bool (goes to type);
- list (affects nargs), list[T] (first subtype goes into type);
- Literal[T1, T2, ...] (interpreted as choices);
- Optional[T] AKA T | None (currently interpreted as required=False for optional and nargs="?" for positional arguments; likely to change in the future as use cases accumulate).
The exact interpretation of the type hints is subject to change in the upcoming versions of Argh.
Added always_flush argument to dispatch() (issue #145)
High-level functions argh.dispatch_command() and argh.dispatch_commands() now accept a new parameter old_name_mapping_policy. The behaviour hasn’t changed because the parameter is True by default. It will change to False in Argh v.0.33 or v.1.0.

Deprecated:

the namespace argument in argh.dispatch() and argh.parse_and_resolve(). Rationale: continued API cleanup. It’s already possible to mutate the namespace object between parsing and calling the endpoint; it’s unlikely that anyone would need to specify a custom namespace class or pre-populate it before parsing. Please file an issue if you have a valid use case.

Other changes:

Refactoring.

Version 0.30.5 (2023-12-25)

Bugs fixed:

A combination of nargs with a list as default value would lead to the values coming from CLI being wrapped in another list (issue #212).

Enhancements:

Argspec guessing: if nargs is not specified but the default value is a list, nargs="*" is assumed and passed to argparse.

Version 0.30.4 (2023-11-04)

There were complaints about the lack of a deprecation cycle for the legacy name mapping policy. This version addresses the issue:

The handling introduced in v.0.30.2 (raising an exception for clarity) is retained for cases when no name mapping policy is specified but function signature contains defaults in non-kwonly args and kwonly args are also defined:
```
def main(alpha, beta=1, *, gamma=2):  # error — explicit policy required
```
In a similar case but when kwonly args are not defined Argh now assumes the legacy name mapping policy (BY_NAME_IF_HAS_DEFAULT) and merely issues a deprecation warning with the same message as the exception mentioned above:
```
def main(alpha, beta=2):    # `[-b BETA] alpha` + DeprecationWarning
```
This ensures that most of the old scripts still work the same way despite the new policy being used by default and enforced in cases when it’s impossible to resolve the mapping conflict.

Please note that this “soft” handling is to be removed in version v0.33 (or v1.0 if the former is not deemed necessary). The new name mapping policy will be used by default without warnings, like in v0.30.

Version 0.30.3 (2023-10-30)

Bugs fixed:

Regression: a positional argument with an underscore used in @arg decorator would cause Argh fail on the assembling stage. (#208)

Version 0.30.2 (2023-10-24)

Bugs fixed:

As reported in #204 and #206, the new default name mapping policy in fact silently changed the CLI API of some scripts: arguments which were previously translated as CLI options became optional positionals. Although the instructions were supplied in the release notes, the upgrade may not necessarily be intentional, so a waste of users’ time is quite likely.

To alleviate this, the default value for name_mapping_policy in standard functions has been changed to None; if it’s not specified, Argh falls back to the new default policy, but raises ArgumentNameMappingError with detailed instructions if it sees a non-kwonly argument with a default value.

Please specify the policy explicitly in order to avoid this error if you need to infer optional positionals (nargs="?") from function signature.

Version 0.30.1 (2023-10-23)

Bugs fixed:

Regression: certain special values in argument default value would cause an exception (#204)

Enhancements:

Improved the tutorial.
Added a more informative error message when the reason is likely to be related to the migration from Argh v0.29 to a version with a new argument name mapping policy.

Other changes:

Added py.typed marker file for PEP 561.

Version 0.30.0 (2023-10-21)

Backwards incompatible changes:

A new policy for mapping function arguments to CLI arguments is used by default (see argh.assembling.NameMappingPolicy).

The following function does not map to func foo [--bar] anymore:
```
def func(foo, bar=None):
    ...
```
Since this release it maps to func foo [bar] instead. Please update the function this way to keep bar an “option”:
```
def func(foo, *, bar=None):
    ...
```
If you cannot modify the function signature to use kwonly args for options, please consider explicitly specifying the legacy name mapping policy:
```
set_default_command(
    func, name_mapping_policy=NameMappingPolicy.BY_NAME_IF_HAS_DEFAULT
)
```
The name mapping policy BY_NAME_IF_HAS_DEFAULT slightly deviates from the old behaviour. Kwonly arguments without default values used to be marked as required options (--foo FOO), now they are treated as positionals (foo). Please consider the new default policy (BY_NAME_IF_KWONLY) for a better treatment of kwonly.
Removed previously deprecated features (#184 → #188):
- argument help string in annotations — reserved for type hints;
- argh.SUPPORTS_ALIASES;
- argh.safe_input();
- previously renamed arguments for add_commands(): namespace, namespace_kwargs, title, description, help;
- pre_call argument in dispatch(). The basic usage remains simple but more granular functions are now available for more control.
  
  Instead of this:
```
argh.dispatch(..., pre_call=pre_call_hook)
```
  please use this:
```
func, ns = argh.parse_and_resolve(...)
pre_call_hook(ns)
argh.run_endpoint_function(func, ns, ...)
```

Deprecated:

The @expects_obj decorator. Rationale: it used to support the old, “un-pythonic” style of usage, which essentially lies outside the scope of Argh. If you are not using the mapping of function arguments onto CLI, then you aren’t reducing the amount of code compared to vanilla Argparse.
The add_help_command argument in dispatch(). Rationale: it doesn’t add much to user experience; it’s not much harder to type --help than it is to type help; moreover, the option can be added anywhere, unlike its positional counterpart.

Enhancements:

Added support for Python 3.12.
Added type annotations to existing Argh code (#185 → #189).
The dispatch() function has been refactored, so in case you need finer control over the process, two new, more granular functions can be used:
- endpoint_function, namespace = argh.parse_and_resolve(…)
- argh.run_endpoint_function(endpoint_function, namespace, …)
Please note that the names may change in the upcoming versions.
Configurable name mapping policy has been introduced for function argument to CLI argument translation (#191 → #199):
- BY_NAME_IF_KWONLY (default and recommended).
- BY_NAME_IF_HAS_DEFAULT (close to pre-v.0.30 behaviour);
Please check API docs on argh.assembling.NameMappingPolicy for details.

Version 0.29.4 (2023-09-23)

Bugs fixed:

Test coverage reported as <100% when argcomplete is installed (#187)

Versions 0.29.1 through 0.29.3

Technical releases for packaging purposes. No changes in functionality.

Version 0.29.0 (2023-09-03)

Backwards incompatible changes:

Wrapped exceptions now cause dispatching.dispatch() to raise SystemExit(1) instead of returning without error. For most users, this means failed commands will now exit with a failure status instead of a success. (#161)

Deprecated:

Renamed arguments in add_commands() (#165):
- namespace → group_name
- namespace_kwargs → group_kwargs
The old names are deprecated and will be removed in v.0.30.

Enhancements:

Can control exit status (see Backwards Incompatible Changes above) when raising CommandError using the code keyword arg.

Bugs fixed:

Positional arguments should not lead to removal of short form of keyword arguments. (#115)

Other changes:

Avoid depending on iocapture by using pytest’s built-in feature (#177)

Version 0.28.1 (2023-02-16)

Fixed bugs in tests (#171, #172)

Version 0.28.0 (2023-02-15)

A major cleanup.

Backward incompatible changes:

Dropped support for Python 2.7 and 3.7.

Deprecated features, to be removed in v.0.30:

argh.assembling.SUPPORTS_ALIASES.
- Always True for recent versions of Python.
argh.io.safe_input() AKA argh.interaction.safe_input().
- Not relevant anymore. Please use the built-in input() instead.
argument pre_call in dispatch().

Even though this hack seems to have been used in some projects, it was never part of the official API and never recommended.

Describing your use case in the discussion about shared arguments can help improve the library to accomodate it in a proper way.
Argument help as annotations.
- Annotations will only be used for types after v.0.30.
- Please replace any instance of:
```
def func(foo: "Foobar"):
```
  with the following:
```
@arg('-f', '--foo', help="Foobar")
def func(foo):
```
  It will be decided later how to keep this functionality “DRY” (don’t repeat yourself) without conflicts with modern conventions and tools.
Added deprecation warnings for some arguments deprecated back in v.0.26.

Version 0.27.2 (2023-02-09)

Minor packaging fix:

chore: include file required by tox.ini in the sdist (#155)

Version 0.27.1 (2023-02-09)

Minor building and packaging fixes:

docs: add Read the Docs config (#160)
chore: include tox.ini in the sdist (#155)

Version 0.27.0 (2023-02-09)

This is the last version to support Python 2.7.

Backward incompatible changes:

Dropped support for Python 2.6.

Enhancements:

Added support for Python 3.7 through 3.11.
Support introspection of function signature behind the @wraps decorator (issue #111).

Fixed bugs:

When command function signature contained **kwargs and positionals without defaults and with underscores in their names, a weird behaviour could be observed (issue #104).
Fixed introspection through decorators (issue #111).
Switched to Python’s built-in unittest.mock (PR #154).
Fixed bug with skip_unknown_args=True (PR #134).
Fixed tests for Python 3.9.7+ (issue #148).

Other changes:

Included the license files in manifest (PR #112).
Extended the list of similar projects (PR #87).
Fixed typos and links in documentation (PR #110, #116, #156).
Switched CI to Github Actions (PR #153).

Version 0.26.2 (2016-05-11)

Removed official support for Python 3.4, added for 3.5.
Various tox-related improvements for development.
Improved documentation.

Version 0.26.1 (2014-10-30)

Fixed bugs:

The undocumented (and untested) argument dispatch(…, pre_call=x) was broken; fixing because at least one important app depends on it (issue #63).

Version 0.26 (2014-10-27)

This release is intended to be the last one before 1.0. Therefore a major cleanup was done. This breaks backward compatibility. If your code is really outdated, please read this list carefully and grep your code.

Removed decorator @alias (deprecated since v.0.19).
Removed decorator @plain_signature (deprecated since v.0.20).
Dropped support for old-style functions that implicitly expected namespace objects (deprecated since v.0.21). The @expects_obj decorator is now mandatory for such functions.
Removed decorator @command (deprecated since v.0.21).
The @wrap_errors decorator now strictly requires that the error classes are given as a list (old behaviour was deprecated since v.0.22).
The allow_warnings argument is removed from argh.completion.autocomplete(). Debug-level logging is used instead. (The warnings were deprecated since v.0.25).

Deprecated:

Deprecated arguments title, help and description in add_commands() helper function. See documentation and issue #60.

Other changes:

Improved representation of default values in the help.
Dispatcher can be configured to skip unknown arguments (issue #57).
Added add_subcommands() helper function (a convenience wrapper for add_commands()).
EntryPoint now stores kwargs for the parser.
Added support for default command with nested commands (issue #78).

This only works with Python 3.4+ due to incorrect behaviour or earlier versions of Argparse (including the stand-alone one as of 1.2.1).

Due to argparse peculiarities the function assignment technique relies on a special ArghNamespace object. It is used by default in ArghParser and the shortcuts, but if you call the vanilla ArgumentParser.parse_args() method, you now have to supply the proper namespace object.

Fixed bugs:

Help formatter was broken for arguments with empty strings as default values (issue #76).

Version 0.25 (2014-07-05)

Added EntryPoint class as another way to assemble functions (issue #59).
Added support for Python 3.4; dropped support for Python 3.3 (this doesn’t mean that Argh is necessarily broken under 3.3, it’s just that I’m not testing against it anymore).
Shell completion warnings are now deprecated in favour of logging.
The command help now displays default values of all arguments (issue #64).
Function docstrings are now displayed verbatim in the help (issue #64).
Argh’s dispatching now should work properly in Cython.

Versions 0.2 through 0.24

A few years of development without a changelog 🫠

Fortunately, a curious reader can always refer to commit messages and changesets.

Version 0.1 (2010-11-12)

The first version! A single file with 182 lines of code including documentation :) It featured subparsers and had the @arg decorator which was basically a deferred ArgumentParser.add_argument() call.

Functions and classes:

class ArghParser
functions add_commands() and dispatch()
decorators @arg and @plain_signature