Kitware
CLI utilities display invalid usage line
Based on how the CLI utils are building the usage line, it's incorrectly marking required arguments as optional with the bracket notation.
For example, compute_many_descriptors -h shows:
usage: compute_many_descriptors [-h] [-v] [-c PATH] [-g PATH] [-b INT]
[--check-image] [-f PATH] [-p PATH]
...
optional arguments:
...
Required Arguments:
-f PATH, --file-list PATH
Path to a file that lists data file paths. Paths in
this file may be relative, but will at some point be
coerced into absolute paths based on the current
working directory.
-p PATH, --completed-files PATH
Path to a file into which we add CSV format lines
detailing filepaths that have been computed from the
file-list provided, as the UUID for that data
(currently the SHA1 checksum of the data).
Note the brackets around [-f PATH] [-p PATH] which indicates they are optional.
I think at the time I first wrote that I didn't know how to tell argparse they were required under certain circumstances. Technically they are not required as the CLIs for most things allow for dumping configuration files, which doesn't require full options, e.g. compute_many_descriptors -g outconfig.json.
Maybe the phrase "Required Arguments" could be rephrased to express when they are required and when they are not.
I think this is traditionally handled with multiple usage lines, i.e.
usage: compute_many_descriptors [-v] -g PATH
compute_many_descriptors [-v] -c PATH [-b INT] [--check-image] -f PATH -p PATH
Makes sense. If you want to incrementally make that change to relevant tool argpase usage, go ahead.