[stdlib-sig] should we try to add argparse?

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le jeudi 10 septembre 2009 à 17:30 -0400, Barry Warsaw a écrit :
> Why does deprecation == breaking?

Well, you have to rewrite your code one day. And since optparse is
*very* widely used, tons of users will be impacted. Python is often used
as a scripting language, even for small one-off scripts that nobody
wants or even knows to maintain.

Besides, any spurious message on the standard output breaks things like
cron scripts, so even the deprecation period can be annoying.

Please do not assume that every Python program is a well-maintained
application with dedicated full-time developers...

> If you want to continue using optparse, that'll be fine for what?  
> 18-36 months or so?  It's a trivial amount of work to port from  
> optparse to argparse.

Ok, if it's trivial then perhaps I'd reconsider my opinion.
Is there a compatibility API?

(please note we have e.g. a lot of XML parsing libraries in the stdlib,
and nobody seems in a hurry to deprecate them)