Availability:
* Already available in universe as python-argparse
Rationale
* argparse will be standard in Python 2.7 and 3.2; the standalone package is
available for Python's back to 2.4.
* http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0389/
* Providing this in main better supports other Python tools that are beginning
to switch to argparse.
* Provides many advanced features such as subcommands.
Security
* No known security issues
QA
* Package is well maintained upstream, and in Debian
* Pretty standard Python package
* Package ships a test suite
UI Standards
* n/a
Build Dependencies
* python-support
* python-sphinx
* libjs-jquery (for python-argparse-doc only)
Standards compliant
* Pretty straightforward distutils-based Python package.
Maintenance
* Packaging seems fairly straightforward
* Maintained well in Debian so sync's should be possible
Background information
* argparse is a new command line option parsing library that has gained many
fans in the Python community. It is similar in nature to the standard
library optparse, but with a cleaner code base and some advanced features
such as subcommand support. PEP 389 has been Accepted so that argparse will
be available in Python 2.7 and 3.2 standard library (it will not replace
optparse, but instead live next to it, with silent deprecations of optparse
in favor of argparse for future code.)
Note that we want to add argparse 1.1 to universe. See bug 537484 and I plan on filing a FFe momentarily for sync'ing to Debian's 1.1 package.