cw — your functions, as a command-line tool

import cw


def greet(name, *, loudly=False):
    """Say hello to someone."""
    return f"HELLO {name}" if loudly else f"hello {name}"


raise SystemExit(cw.dispatch(greet))  # that is the whole CLI

$ python greet.py world --loudly
HELLO world

pip install cw — no dependencies, MIT, and import cw costs stdlib only.

---

What it does

You hand cw.dispatch a function, a list of functions, a dict, or a module. It reads the signatures, builds an argparse parser, calls the function you asked for, prints what it returned, and returns an exit code. Nothing to decorate, nothing to declare.

$ python greet.py --help
usage: greet.py [-h] [-l] name

Say hello to someone.

positional arguments:
  name          -

options:
  -h, --help    show this help message and exit
  -l, --loudly  False

$ python greet.py
usage: greet.py [-h] [-l] name
greet.py: error: the following arguments are required: name
$ echo $?
2

The parser cw builds is a plain argparse.ArgumentParser, never a subclass. That is deliberate and load-bearing: argcomplete.autocomplete() is argparse-typed at its signature, so shell completion works on a cw CLI with the same # PYTHON_ARGCOMPLETE_OK marker and no adapter.

More than one command

Pass anything with several functions in it. A callable value is a command; a mapping or iterable value is a group:

import cw


def add(a: int, b: int):
    """Add two numbers."""
    return a + b


def ls(path=".", *, long=False):
    """List a directory."""
    return [f"{path}/one", f"{path}/two"]


COMMANDS = {"add": add, "list": ls, "git-ops": {"add": add}}
raise SystemExit(cw.dispatch(COMMANDS, prog="tool"))

$ tool --help
usage: tool [-h] {add,list,git-ops} ...

positional arguments:
  {add,list,git-ops}
    add               Add two numbers.
    list              List a directory.
    git-ops

options:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit

$ tool add 2 3
5
$ tool list -p /tmp
/tmp/one
/tmp/two

Six forms of obj, each decided by the value, never by a string DSL:

obj	becomes
any callable	one command, with no command word at all
[f, g] — any iterable	commands named from each __name__
{'name': f} — a mapping	commands named by the key
{'grp': <any of the above>}	a group (one level deep, argh's limit)
a module, or any object	its public callable attributes; __all__, if present, is the name list
'pkg.mod:name' — a string	always exactly one command, imported lazily

A name from a key or __all__ beats __name__, and is then hyphenated: {'parse_pth_paths': f} gives you parse-pth-paths.

What a command's return value does

None prints nothing. A list, a tuple or a generator prints one line per item — lazily, flushing as it goes, so a long-running command streams. Anything else prints as one line, dicts included. 0, False and '' do print.

>>> import cw
>>> def lines():
...     return ['a', 'b']
>>> cw.dispatch(lines, [])
a
b
0

Raise cw.CommandError for an expected failure: one line to stderr, no traceback, and an exit code you choose. Any other exception keeps its traceback, because a bug deserves one.

config — this call's particulars

config is a plain dict, shaped exactly like obj and keyed the way you type it on the command line. Its leaves are add_argument keyword arguments:

CONFIG = {
    "path": {"help": "the directory to list", "metavar": "DIR"},
    "long": {"flags": ["-l", "--long"], "help": "one line per entry"},
}
cw.dispatch(ls, config=CONFIG, prog="ls")

$ ls --help
usage: ls [-h] [-p DIR] [-l]

List a directory.

options:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  -p DIR, --path DIR  the directory to list (default: '.')
  -l, --long          one line per entry (default: False)

For several commands it nests the same way obj does — {'git-ops': {'add': {'a': {'help': '...'}}}} — and a key that names no command, group or parameter is a startup error, listing the names that do exist. That is on purpose: a mis-keyed config entry that silently does nothing is the failure mode this rule exists to kill.

Two leaf values are not add_argument kwargs:

• cw.HIDE removes a parameter from the command line entirely, leaving it to its own default. This is how you keep a dependency-injection parameter out of the CLI.
• {'codec': callable} decodes a parsed token after parsing — the place for a str -> object conversion that argparse's type= would get wrong, because argparse applies type= to defaults and to const too.

>>> def serve(host='0.0.0.0', port=8080, pool=None):
...     return f'{host}:{port}'
>>> parser = cw.mk_parser(serve, config={'pool': cw.HIDE})
>>> [a.dest for a in parser._actions][1:]
['host', 'port']

convention — what the defaults ARE

config is per call; convention is per context — a repo, a house style, the fleet. It is a frozen dataclass of nine fields, and two values ship.

cw.ARGH is the default, and it reproduces argh 0.31.3 bit-for-bit — footguns included. That is the point: a repo swaps its dispatcher for cw and its --help does not move. Concretely, under ARGH:

• a parameter with a default becomes an option, one without becomes a positional;
• bool=True becomes store_false (so --loudly on loudly=True turns it off);
• an option's help column is repr(default) unless you give it one;
• short flags come from the first character, and if two parameters share one, neither gets a short flag — -h is always lost to --help;
• a dict return value is not iterated; a map object prints as <map object at 0x...>;
• **kwargs is silently dropped from the parser.

cw.MODERN is the same grammar with the sharp edges filed off — and it is one keyword:

cw.dispatch(COMMANDS, convention=cw.MODERN)

It makes a parameter positional only when the signature says so (*-keyword-only becomes an option), resolves type annotations even when you have overridden something, hyphenates group names, iterates anything iterable that is not a str/bytes/Mapping, and unwraps Optional[X], Enum and pathlib.Path.

>>> import cw
>>> def counted():
...     return map(str, range(2))
>>> cw.dispatch(counted, [])                        # ARGH: a map is not a list
<map object at 0x...>
0
>>> cw.dispatch(counted, [], convention=cw.MODERN)  # MODERN: anything iterable
0
1
0

Every improvement cw has ships as a named convention value that defaults off. There is no third value and no Convention(...) you are expected to build; if you want one, dataclasses.replace(cw.ARGH, short_flags=False) is a Convention.

The house idiom is functools.partial, not a cw-specific binder:

import functools, cw

dispatch = functools.partial(cw.dispatch, convention=cw.MODERN, prog="mytool")

One ARGH behaviour worth knowing before it surprises you: under cw.ARGH, any config entry (or @compat.arg) on a function switches type-annotation inference off for the whole function — so adding a help string to one parameter can change another parameter's coercion from int to str. That is argh's rule (can_use_hints = not declared_args), reproduced deliberately; see ADR-0003. convention=cw.MODERN is the way out.

Escape hatches

Everything above is cw.dispatch, which is the composition of two functions you can use separately.

Build a parser, run it later. mk_parser is pure — no parsing, no I/O, no side effects — which is what makes it inspectable from a test:

>>> parser = cw.mk_parser(COMMANDS, prog='tool')
>>> type(parser) is __import__('argparse').ArgumentParser
True
>>> cw.run(parser, ['add', '2', '3'])
5
0

The convention travels with the parser, so convention=cw.MODERN stays one act even when build and run are two calls. (How that works — one reserved set_defaults key on a parser that is deliberately not a subclass — is ADR-0002.)

Bind a function to a parser you built yourself:

>>> import argparse
>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='count')
>>> parser.add_argument('--verbose', action='store_true') and None
>>> def tally(word, *, times=1):
...     return [word] * times
>>> _ = cw.set_default_command(parser, tally)
>>> cw.run(parser, ['hi', '-t', '2'])
hi
hi
0

Grow a parser one group at a time. The shape t/priv and i/wads use — a parser object, then repeated add_commands — is cw.add_commands, and it is the only way to pass per-group add_subparsers keywords such as title:

>>> parser = cw.mk_parser([], prog='priv')
>>> def status(): "Say how things are."
>>> _ = cw.add_commands(parser, [status], group_name='git_ops',
...                     group_kwargs={'title': 'Git operations'})
>>> cw.run(parser, ['git_ops', 'status'])
0

cw.mk_parser([], prog=...) is the empty-parser seed. A plain argparse.ArgumentParser() works too and renders identically — add_commands gives every subparser cw.ArghHelpFormatter when the parent still carries argparse's stock one, which is exactly what argh does — but then the root parser's own --help uses argparse's formatter, again exactly as under argh. Pass formatter_class=cw.ArghHelpFormatter yourself if you want the root to match too.

add_commands takes any obj dispatch takes, a mapping included — so a group whose members you want to name yourself is a mapping, exactly as it would be inside dispatch:

>>> parser = cw.mk_parser([], prog='priv')
>>> _ = cw.add_commands(parser, {'st': status}, group_name='git_ops',
...                     group_kwargs={'title': 'Git operations'})
>>> cw.run(parser, ['git_ops', 'st'])
0

Wanting a group title from the mapping form

cw.dispatch({'archive': {...}}) builds the group, but a single mapping has nowhere to put the group's own add_subparsers keywords. That is deliberate, not a gap: add_commands already takes a mapping and group_kwargs, so the answer is two calls rather than a fourth behaviour-carrying keyword on dispatch (#31, ADR-0008). The console-script idiom is:

TOP_COMMANDS = {"list": list_cmd, "info": info_cmd}
ARCHIVE_COMMANDS = {"list": archive_list_cmd, "log": archive_log_cmd}


def mk_parser():
    parser = cw.mk_parser(TOP_COMMANDS, prog="xa")
    cw.add_commands(
        parser,
        ARCHIVE_COMMANDS,
        group_name="archive",
        group_kwargs={"title": "Postmortem archive"},
    )
    return parser


def main():
    raise SystemExit(cw.run(mk_parser()))

Two things bite people here, and cw's error messages now name both:

• group_kwargs['help'] is silently inert; you want 'title'. The group's row in the parent's --help is fed by add_parser(help=...), which both argh and cw source from group_kwargs['title']. help is forwarded to add_subparsers(), where argparse accepts it and renders it nowhere a reader looks. cw reproduces argh exactly — that is the product — but it is a trap that shipped a group description nobody ever saw in at least one fleet repo.
• cw.run returns an exit code where argh's parser.dispatch() raised it. Splitting the build from the run is precisely when the raise SystemExit(...) gets dropped, and a console script that starts exiting 0 on a usage error breaks every CI step that checks $?. Nothing else catches it: unit tests pass, and a --help diff shows nothing.

Trying it any of the other three ways is an error that names this one:

>>> cw.dispatch({"archive": {"log": status}}, [], group_kwargs={"title": "T"})
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
TypeError: 'group_kwargs' cannot be passed here. cw's group keywords belong to
cw.add_commands, ...

A mapping value must be the commands, not the factory that returns them. A callable value is always a command, because there is no way to tell a zero-argument factory from a command that takes no arguments — so write the parentheses:

>>> def dispatch_funcs():
...     return [status]
>>> list(cw.commands_from({'git_ops': dispatch_funcs()}))     # a GROUP
['git_ops']
>>> list(cw.commands_from({'git_ops': dispatch_funcs}))       # a COMMAND
['git-ops']

Note the hyphen in the second one: {'git_ops': dispatch_funcs} — no parentheses — gives you a command called git-ops that prints the reprs of the group's members, exit 0.

Capture the output. out= and err= are plain parameters resolved at call time, so a test can pass a StringIO — something an argh CLI cannot do, because argh binds output_file=sys.stdout in a signature default:

>>> import io
>>> out = io.StringIO()
>>> cw.dispatch(lines, [], out=out)
0
>>> out.getvalue()
'a\nb\n'

They capture argparse's own --help, usage: and error: output. They do not capture a command body's own print(), which goes where the process's print goes — as it does under argh.

Skip the CLI entirely. standalone=False makes the same call an ordinary function call: nothing printed, nothing caught, the function's own return value:

>>> cw.dispatch(greet, ['world', '--loudly'], standalone=False)
'HELLO world'

Change how results are printed — egress= is one keyword:

>>> cw.dispatch(lambda: {'a': 1}, [], egress=cw.json_egress)
{
  "a": 1
}
0

cw.argh_egress (the default), cw.iterable_egress (MODERN's) and cw.json_egress ship; an egress is any (result, *, out, err) -> int.

Change how types are inferred — decode= is one keyword, taking (inspect.Parameter, hint) -> add_argument kwargs | callable | None. cw.argh_decode and cw.modern_decode ship.

Those three — decode=, egress=, convention= — are cw's only seams, and the list of things that are deliberately not seams is as binding as the list that are. Both are in ADR-0001.

Shell completion:

pip install 'cw[completion]'

then put # PYTHON_ARGCOMPLETE_OK at the top of your console script. cw.run calls argcomplete for you when it is installed, and does nothing when it is not.

Migrating from argh

cw replaces argh (LGPL-3.0-or-later) with an MIT package that reproduces its grammar. There are two steps and you can stop after the first for as long as you like.

Step 1 — one line. cw.compat implements argh's eleven measured names:

-import argh
+from cw import compat as argh

Everything warns once, on first use; CW_COMPAT_QUIET=1 silences it for a repo that has decided to live here for a while. Declare the dependency as:

dependencies = ["cw>=0.1,<0.2"]

Grep for three import forms before you do it. The one-line change rewrites import argh; it cannot rewrite a name or a submodule somebody imported directly.

grep for	why it breaks	write instead
from argh import CommandError	the module still imports argh, and cw will not catch an exception class it has never heard of — CommandError: boom / exit 1 becomes an unhandled traceback. The shim structurally cannot fix this one; it is the single highest-value line on the checklist.	from cw import CommandError
from argh.assembling import NameMappingPolicy	cw.compat is a module, not a package, so there is no cw.compat.assembling	from cw.compat import NameMappingPolicy
argh.interaction.confirm	same reason — there is no interaction namespace	argh.confirm (i.e. cw.confirm)

Each of the last two raises an AttributeError naming the replacement, so a missed one is a startup failure rather than a silent change.

Step 2 — delete the compat import. dispatch_commands(funcs) becomes cw.dispatch(funcs); @argh.arg(...) decorators become one config dict; argh's __name__-mutation trick for renaming a command becomes a mapping key.

Prove the migration did nothing. cw.testing records a CLI's behaviour before the change and replays it after:

# on the old code -- this half imports no cw
python -m cw.testing characterize 'mytool' --cases ./cases.txt -o before.json
# on the new
python -m cw.testing replay before.json --prog 'mytool'
# ... and, when the migration promised --help would not move:
python -m cw.testing replay before.json --prog 'mytool' --strict-help
python -m cw.testing diff-help before.json --prog 'mytool'   # read it, do not assert it

replay asserts the exit code and both streams in full for every non---help case, and the normalised usage: line for a --help one. A --help body that moved is reported as the non-fatal help-differs — never as identical — because a change of formatter moves only the help column and the description block and would otherwise be invisible. --strict-help makes it fatal; diff-help prints it for a human.

The recording half imports no cw — it is one file you can copy into a repo that will never depend on cw, which is most of them.

Two things to expect, both argh's rules that cw reproduces:

• config keys are spelled the way the command line reads (parse-pth-paths), while obj keys and __all__ entries are Python identifiers. Adjacent dicts, two spellings. A wrong key is a startup error, not a silent drop.
• Under cw.ARGH, one config entry disables annotation inference for the whole function (above, and ADR-0003).

cw's own CLI

python -m cw specs 'mypkg.cli:main'    # what flags would this function get, and why?
python -m cw help  'mypkg.cli:main'    # the --help cw would print for it
python -m cw parity                    # cw's own migration gate, 8 shapes / 137 cases

specs is the one that earns its place day to day — it answers "why did that parameter not get a short flag?" without building, running or importing anybody's __main__.

Resolving a function from a string

cw.resolution is older than the dispatcher and independent of it: it turns a string specification into a callable, which is what lets a CLI accept a function as a parameter value.

>>> from cw import resolve_to_function, parse_ast_spec
>>> resolve_to_function('builtins.len')([1, 2, 3])
3
>>> resolve_to_function('str.upper()', parse_ast_spec)('hello')
'HELLO'

Both spellings of a reference work — the dot path above, and the 'pkg.mod:name' colon form the rest of cw uses (python -m cw, mk_parser's obj:, commands_from):

>>> import os.path
>>> resolve_to_function('os.path:join') is os.path.join
True

parse_json_spec, parse_ast_spec and parse_spec_with_dot_path are the three spec grammars; resource_inputs wraps a function so that named parameters are resolved on the way in. It is the one place cw touches a third-party package, and it is an optional extra:

pip install 'cw[resource]'

Install

pip install cw                  # the CLI. no dependencies.
pip install 'cw[completion]'    # + argcomplete, for shell completion
pip install 'cw[resource]'      # + i2, for cw.resource_inputs
pip install 'cw[dev]'           # + pytest and argh, to run the differential test suite

Python 3.10+.

Design notes

Eight decisions, with their evidence, in docs/adr/:

ADR-0001	The three seams, and everything that is deliberately not one
ADR-0002	How a plain ArgumentParser carries its convention and ingress into run
ADR-0003	The four-tier merge ladder is argh's field-specific merge, not dict.update
ADR-0004	group_kwargs, mapping-key naming, MODERN's help column
ADR-0005	Release, pinning and rollback — cw.ARGH is frozen once published
ADR-0006	What v1 does not ship, and where each cut comes back
ADR-0007	What three adversarial reviews changed, and the blind spots that hid it
ADR-0008	Why a group's group_kwargs gets no channel in the mapping form

Two properties worth stating because they are easy to lose and hard to get back: cw.mk_parser returns a plain ArgumentParser, and import cw pulls stdlib only — both are asserted by tests, not by intention.