What is configargparser?

There are three main ways that programs get data from their environment when they start up:

1. Commandline arguments,
2. Configuration files
3. Environment variables

Currently, if a python program wants to parse data from these sources, it needs to first check the environment variables, then check for a configuration file and finally look at the commandline arguments. The general cascade is that commandline arguments should override config files which should override environment variables. Unfortunately, checking all of these places is a major pain -- which is what configargparser is meant to address.

Installation

Installation should be straight forward:

To install via pip:

pip install configargparser

To install from source:

python setup.py install

TODO

This implementation is still incomplete. Here's a partial TODO list:

• (easy) Interaction with parser defaults
• (easy) If type conversion doesn't work, check against how argparse handles error messages

Conform to documented behavior

• (easy) Write a function that figures out dest from args in add_argument, instead of relying on the Action object

Less Easy Stuff…

I haven't tried any of this yet. It's unlikely—but still possible!—that it could just work…

• (hard?) Mutual Exclusion
• (hard?) Argument Groups (If implemented, these groups should get a section in the config file.)
• (hard?) Sub Commands (Sub-commands should also get a section in the config file.)