Re: argsparse: allowing --version without mandatory options

On 2025-10-30 at 13:50:42 +0100,
Loris Bennett <[email protected]> wrote:

> "Loris Bennett" <[email protected]> writes:

> > I am writing a program for the command-line which uses 'argsparse'.  I
> > want to make some options mandatory by setting 'required=True', but
> > still allow the program to run with the option '--version' (which just
> > shows the version and then exits) even if the mandatory options are
> > missing.
> >
> > Is there a standard way of doing this?

Don't take this the wrong way, but what, exactly, is a mandatory option?
Mandatory and optional are quite opposite.  If you have mandatory
arguments, then make the arguments mandatory.  If you have optional
options, then make the options optional.  Otherwise, as a user, I just
have extra typing (i.e., the "--whatever" before the mandatory argument)
to type (redundancy intended).

Elsewhere, I've seen --version and --help options handled as special
cases that just do their thing in their "action" logic and exit the
program right then and there.  I'm not necessarily in favor of such a
design, but it's not as uncommon as I would prefer, and it does meet
your requirement.

HTH.