Improve sysconfig CLI

[donBarbos]

Proposal:

Currently, the sysconfig module's CLI is fairly hidden and inaccessible. I think there are two main issues with the module CLI.

1. There is no "Command Line Interface" section of the docs (only have example for python -m sysconfig output) like there is with some other modules e.g. random. (It is, however, listed under the Modules command-line interface section)
2. There is no help section when running the platform CLI, the CLI takes argument --generate-posix-vars, which I could only find from looking at the source in ./Lib/sysconfig/__main__.py.

Inspired by #131524

I suggest adding a 1. full-fledged CommandLineTest class to the tests (currently there is only test_main which only checks that the output is present), 2. update the documentation so that it is the same as other command line interaces, 3. use argparse as a quality CLI tool

P.S.: sysconfig CLI was added in January 2010 for Python 3.2 (edacea3)

I'm happy to submit a PR if needed.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response

Linked PRs

• gh-132726: Change the heading of sysconfig CLI section #133035
• [3.13] gh-132726: Change the heading of sysconfig CLI section (GH-133035) #133088

[donBarbos]

cc @hugovk

[tomasr8]

cc @FFY00 as the sysconfig maintainer

[hugovk]

This CLI feels more of a debugging tool? I'm not sure how useful tests will be in this case.

Brief docs are probably enough. We could change the heading to "Command-line usage", like for others (if so, keep the existing #sysconfig-cli anchor).

[donBarbos]

This CLI feels more of a debugging tool? I'm not sure how useful tests will be in this case.

Brief docs are probably enough. We could change the heading to "Command-line usage", like for others (if so, keep the existing #sysconfig-cli anchor).

done, and last question what do you think about --generate-posix-vars flag. Keep it, add it to documentation or maybe add help message to CLI via argparse?

[vstinner]

Please don't document --generate-posix-vars. It's only used to build Python itself.