On 06/14/2018 07:15 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> added the comment:
>
> On Thu, 2018-06-14 20:02 +0000, Pablo Galindo Salgado <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
>> The (possible) confusion is the existence of a manpage only available
>> though argparse (`./python foo.py --manpage`)
> This report isn't asking for that. (I see only one person proposing such an interface, and even that person said it's not a good idea.) So please don't conflate that with the original bug report.
>
>> I am  not sure how many people do something like `./python poc_2.py > output
>> && man ./output` to **read** the manpage.
> Right, I am not asking for anything like that; I'm not asking that ‘argparse’ grow a way to read a manual page,. I am asking only for a standard way to programmatically generate that manual page from the information ‘argparse’ already knows.
>
>>> This is asking that the ‘argparse’ library should have an API to
>>> create a manual page, for use in the build system.
>> At this point argparse is user facing in the sense that once configured,
>> it provides functionality for the user of the command line application.
>> My opinion is that it will be weird to have it provide also APIs for
>> creating man pages (which is a developer utility).
> Creating an argument parser itself is already a developer activity, and we don't see that as weird that ‘argparse’ allows for that.
>
> I'm arguing that the library already knows how to turn the argument collection into a user-facing document (the usage message), and a manual page is a different way of rendering that same internal data. So that's why ‘argparse’ is a consistent place to have that functionality.
>
>> My humble opinion is
>> that it if argparse starts to provide APIs for usage at install time is
>> not "doing one thing and doing it well".
> That API already exists: the specific ‘ArgumentParser’ is available to be imported for a program which defines one. So, the library already provides APIs for usage at install time (or any other run-time).
>
> I am asking to make that API more useful for the distribution of programs.
>
> ----------
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <https://bugs.python.org/issue14102>
> _______________________________________

Correct, the reason I would want this is to add something to a Makefile 
to automatically generate a man page, when you do a make install

manpages: foo.py
	./python foo.py --manpage > foo.1
install.manpages: manpages
	install -D -m 644 foo.1 ${DESTDIR}/usr/share/man/man1