command line interface

[decarlof]

@pierrethibault during the presentation we discussed about improving the command line interface. I have been using argparse together with a config.py file to create a cli that allows, among other things, to:

• set a default parameter value (if none is passed the default is used)
• limit parameter selection to a data type or to a known list (optional)
• update of the default parameter to the last used (optional)

If you think this is useful I can add a template to the project, I just a list of parameters to start with

[pierrethibault]

Thanks for offering! Sure please add the template somewhere.

For now the cli depends on Click, which I found is a quite convenient way to deal with that. But I am happy alternative suggestions.

[decarlof]

The results/functionalities are very similar to what I have (see as an example of one of my projects the end of this page) but Click seems much easier to implement.

In my case I use a config.py file where I define the parameters, then in the main.py I use this code to associate each command with the corresponding set of parameters. As I said they deliver the same but Click seems more elegant.

One question: does Click has the option to store the last set of used parameters, i.e. if the command is called again without any parameters will run with the last used instead of the default?

This is an option I found very useful with project using a very large set of parameters (see the config.py of tomopy-cli for example)