python setup tools console_scripts with arguments

Question

I want to implement my pypy.py script on commandline, I need to work with setup tools but the console_script does not work properly as my pypy.py needs two arguments, please guide me how can I modify it properly to work on commendline.

python.py

def main(agru1, argu2):

    "do something"

 if __name__ == "__main__":
        main()

when I include it in my setup.py file, as console_script as follow

setup( 
     entry_points={
        'console_scripts': ['pypy = pypy.pypy:main'],
    }

)

And I get the following error when I run it on commandline:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/python", line 9, in <module>
load_entry_point('Pypy==0.1', 'console_scripts', 'pypy')()
TypeError: main() takes at least 2 arguments (0 given)

Answer 1

The entry point must be a function that may be invoked using exactly zero arguments. If you want to pass in arguments from the command line, say you want to invoke it like:

$ pypy a1 a2

You need to read them from sys.argv instead. So your python module should contain this:

def program(arg1, arg2):
    print(arg1, arg2)

def main():
    import sys
    arg1, arg2 = sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2]
    program(arg1, arg2)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Alternatively, the main function may instead take an argv argument that defaults to sys.argv if importing sys is desirable at the top level of the module:

def main(argv=sys.argv):
    program(argv[1], argv[2])

Running that command as above should print out a1 a2 into the console. Error handling on user input is your own exercise.

Answer 2

Similar to the answer of metatoaster, instead of using sys.argv you can use argsparse https://docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html, which makes the passing of argumnets a bit more user-friendly.

import argparse


if __name__ == "__main__":
  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
  parser.add_argument('--arg1', help='arg1 help')
  parser.add_argument('--arg2', help='arg2 help')
  args = parser.parse_args()
  print("arg1 {}, arg2 {}".format(args.arg1, args.arg2)

Call it like:

pypy --arg1 1 --arg2 2