[docs] [issue22401] argparse: 'resolve' conflict handler damages the actions of the parent parser

[Jared Deckard]

Jared Deckard added the comment:

That is correct. (Thank you for whipping up a repro script from my description).

I appreciate the work around, but it is nearly as verbose as manually duplicating the parameters on the child and I would have to type up a large comment block to educate future developers on the hack.

Is there some documentation I am missing or is the "resolve" conflict handler broken?

> The parents= argument takes a list of ArgumentParser objects, collects all the positional and optional actions from them, and adds these actions to the ArgumentParser object being constructed.
https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/argparse.html#parents

It would be nice if the "error" conflict handler ignored conflicts when the actions are identical.

It should be expected that the "resolve" conflict handler would not modify the parents. It is exhibiting undocumented and undesirable side effect, which indicates to me that it is a bug not a missing feature.

As for the patch, I'm not sure why you would ever want "action_copy" to be False. It seems like creating copies to insulate the originals ignores the underlying issue that these parents are being mutated when the operation implies a union of properties with no side effects.

I don't think the fix for this should be behind an optional flag, I think the fix is to update "resolve" to take into consideration multiple parents like the custom conflict handler in your sample.

----------

_______________________________________
Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue22401>
_______________________________________