Command Line Interface#

The pip._internal.cli package is responsible for processing and providing pip’s command line interface. This package handles:

  • CLI option definition and parsing

  • autocompletion

  • dispatching to the various commands

  • utilities like progress bars and spinners

Note

This section of the documentation is currently being written. pip developers welcome your help to complete this documentation. If you’re interested in helping out, please let us know in the tracking issue.

Overview#

A ConfigOptionParser instance is used as the “main parser”, for parsing top level args.

Command then uses another ConfigOptionParser instance, to parse command-specific args.

  • TODO: How & where options are defined (cmdoptions, command-specific files).

  • TODO: How & where arguments are processed. (main_parser, command-specific parser)

  • TODO: How processed arguments are accessed. (attributes on argument to Command.run())

  • TODO: How configuration and CLI “blend”. (implemented in ConfigOptionParser)

  • TODO: progress bars and spinners

  • TODO: quirks / standard practices / broad ideas. (avoiding lists in option def’n, special cased option value types, )

Future Refactoring Ideas#

  • Change option definition to be a more declarative, consistent, static data-structure, replacing the current partial(Option, ...) form

  • Move progress bar and spinner to a cli.ui subpackage

  • Move all Command classes into a cli.commands subpackage (including base classes)