Changelog

7.0.0 (2025-06-15)

  • Dropped support for Python 3.5 and 3.6.

  • Added the DEFOPT_DEBUG environment variable to help troubleshooting union parser failures.

  • Union members that come after str or pathlib.Path no longer need to have a valid parser.

  • Support optional single-item tuples with None parsers.

  • Support toplevel type aliases created with the type statement.

  • Pass-through more Sphinx standard roles.

  • Made parsed function docstring available as signature(...).doc, and tuple of suppressed exception types as signature(...).raises. On the other hand defopt.signature no longer annotates the return type with the suppressed exceptions, and defopt.bind only wraps the returned callable object in an exception suppressor if needed.

  • defopt.signature now correctly annotates parameters with no type annotation using inspect.Parameter.empty instead of None.

  • defopt.signature also accepts docstrings as input.

  • Document defopt.signature as provisional APIs.

  • Removed the deprecated strict_kwonly in favor of cli_options.

  • Support functools.partial to set or overwrite function default values.

6.4.0 (2022-07-19)

6.3.0 (2022-02-07)

  • Fixed typing.Optional[bool] to still be treated as a flag.

  • Added support for tuple[X, ...] and Collection[X] (Thanks to @neelmraman).

  • Disabled syntax highlighting when parsing, thus getting rid of a weak dependency on pygments.

  • Tweaked newline handling in help generation.

6.2.0 (2021-11-24)

  • Bumped docutils dependency to >=0.12, for setuptools compatibility.

  • Added support for Python 3.10, and for A | B-style unions (only on that version of Python).

  • Fixed bad interaction between custom None parsers and tuple parsers.

  • Give preference to None parsers in Unions.

  • defopt.signature annotates the return type with the documented raisable exception types.

  • Added defopt.bind to allow preprocessing arguments before performing the call.

  • Added the ability to use nested subcommands.

6.1.0 (2021-02-25)

  • Boolean flags are now implemented using a variant of argparse.BooleanOptionalAction.

  • Added no_negated_flags.

  • A custom parser set for type(None) now affects parsing of typing.Optional too.

6.0.2 (2020-12-08)

  • Don’t get tripped by Attributes sections.

  • Added support for Python 3.9.

6.0.1 (2020-09-18)

  • Fixed support for container types defaulting to None.

6.0.0 (2020-05-11)

  • Added support for Union and Literal types.

  • Assume that types annotated as constructible from a single str are their own parser.

  • Added support for catching exceptions.

  • Added support for passing functions as a {name: function} mapping (Thanks to @johnfarina).

  • Removed support for Python<=3.4.

  • Disallowed parsers=None as a synonym for parsers={}.

  • Added defopt.signature to separate the signature-and-docstring parsing from the ArgumentParser construction.

  • Fixed removal of comments from help string.

  • Added support for --version.

  • Fixed displaying of defaults for parameters with no help, and added show_defaults.

  • Support varargs documented under *args instead of args.

  • Support standard Sphinx roles in the Python domain (:py:func:, :func:, etc.); they are just stripped out.

  • Arbitrary type-hinted functions can now by run with python -mdefopt dotted.name args ..., as if dotted.name was passed to defopt.run.

  • Support more RST constructs: doctest blocks, rubrics (used by Napoleon for sectioning).

5.1.0 (2019-03-01)

  • Added argparse_kwargs.

  • Fixed short flag generation to avoid collision with -h.

5.0.0 (2018-10-18)

  • Added default parser for slice.

  • Removed support for passing multiple functions positionally.

  • Added support for Python 3.7.

  • Removed support for Python 3.3.

4.0.1 (2017-11-26)

  • Fixed crash when handing a NamedTuple followed by other arguments

4.0.0 (2017-11-07)

  • Changed parser generation to only make flags from keyword-only arguments, treating arguments with defaults as optional positionals

  • Changed subparser generation to replace dashes in names with underscores

  • Added support for RST lists

  • Added support for typed Tuple and NamedTuple arguments

  • Added __all__

  • Ignored arguments whose names start with underscores

3.2.0 (2017-05-30)

  • Added show_types option to automatically display variable types (Thanks to @anntzer)

  • Added default parser for pathlib.Path when it is available (Thanks to @anntzer)

  • Added annotations example to the generated documentation

3.1.1 (2017-04-12)

  • Fixed environment markers in wheels

3.1.0 (2017-04-12)

Thanks to @anntzer for contributing the features in this release.

  • Changed defopt.run to take multiple functions as a single list

  • Deprecated passing multiple functions positionally

  • Added subcommand summaries to the help message for multiple functions

  • Added automatic short flags where they are unambiguous

  • Added rendering of italic, bold and underlined text from docstrings

  • Added Python 3.6 classifier to setup.py

  • Dropped nose as a test runner

3.0.0 (2016-12-16)

  • Added support for Python 3.6

  • Changed keyword-only arguments without defaults to required flags

  • Added support for all variants of param and type

  • Added support for list-typed variable positional arguments

  • Fixed help message formatting to avoid argparse’s string interpolation

  • Added __version__ attribute

2.0.1 (2016-09-13)

  • Fixed handling of generic types in Python 3.5.2 (and typing 3.5.2)

2.0.0 (2016-05-10)

  • Added ability to specify short flags

  • Added automatic --name and --no-name flags for optional booleans

  • Added automatic translation of underscores to hyphens in all flags

  • Removed defopt.parser

1.3.0 (2016-03-21)

  • Added parsers argument to defopt.run

  • Deprecated defopt.parser

1.2.0 (2016-02-25)

  • Added support for type annotations

  • Added parameter defaults to help text

  • Removed default line wrapping of help text

  • Added ‘1’ and ‘0’ as accepted values for True and False respectively

1.1.0 (2016-02-21)

  • Added support for Google- and Numpy-style docstrings

  • Changed defopt.run to return the value from the called function

1.0.1 (2016-02-14)

  • Added workaround to display raw text of any unparsed element (issue #1)

1.0.0 (2016-02-14)

  • Removed decorator interface and added simpler defopt.run interface

  • Added full documentation hosted on Read the Docs

  • Added more informative exceptions for type lookup failures

  • Fixed bug where defopt.parser was not returning the input function

  • Fixed type lookups to occur in each respective function’s global namespace

  • Fixed bug where subcommands did not properly parse Enums

  • Fixed Enum handling to display members in the order they were defined

0.3.1 (2016-02-10)

  • Added support for docstrings that only contain parameter information

  • Added more informative exceptions for insufficiently documented functions

  • Fixed type parsing bug on Python 2 when future is installed

  • Switched to building universal wheels

0.3.0 (2016-02-10)

  • Added support for Python 2.7

  • Fixed code that was polluting the logging module’s root logger

0.2.0 (2016-02-09)

  • Added support for combined parameter type and description definitions

  • Fixed crashing bug when an optional Enum-typed flag wasn’t specified

0.1.0 (2016-02-08)

  • Initial version