[Python-Dev] Missing command line documentation for new tools (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Tue May 29 04:31:16 CEST 2012

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

As the standard library comes to include more directly executed tools, we really need to focus on keeping the Setup & Usage docs up to date. The fact we've been historically lax on that front is no excuse for perpetuating the problem for new additions.

Given an exchange on the tracker, I feel I should expand on this point.

Historically, our Setup & Usage documentation has only covered the main Python executable, even though we actually install additional tools, including pydoc, idle, 2to3 and now pysetup and pyvenv, and provide additional documented and supported command line functionality via command line execution of certain modules.

It is my view that this lack of centralised command line usage documentation is an oversight, not a deliberate policy that should be continued (hence the two new blocking issues for 3.3 as noted in my previous post).

I've now created two more (lower priority) issues to cover the other officially supported command line interfaces that are currently missing from the setup & usage documentation: Existing scripts (pydoc, idle, 2to3): http://bugs.python.org/issue14944 Supported -m commands: http://bugs.python.org/issue14945

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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