Below is a list of the existing tools I have looked at and why I feel they don't fill the same need as MILC.
Note: This list was compiled in 2018. In 2020 I edited the list to remove dead projects but I not go searching for new projects. The time for justifying MILC's existence has passed.
| Name | Argument Parsing | Config File | Logging | Subcommands | Subcommand Config |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MILC | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Argparse | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| ConfigParser | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| logging | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ |
| Cement | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Cliar | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Click | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Clize | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Cogs | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Defopt | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Docopt | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Fire | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Plac | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✖ |
The built-in argparse module is amazing- MILC uses it under the hood. Using it directly as an end-user is complicated and error-prone however. The common patterns mean you end up putting the definition of CLI arguments in a different place from the code that uses those arguments.
Cement is a very heavy MVC framework for building CLI tools. It includes all the functionality MILC provides and then some. If you're looking for an MVC framework for your tool this is the one to pick.
If you are looking for an MVC framework MILC probably isn't what you want. Use Cement instead.
https://moigagoo.github.io/cliar/
This is an interesting library. The author makes some good points about magic and DSL's. But it requires you to write a class for your CLI. Classes are good, but not every tool should be a class.
Cliar does not support a configuration file or logging.
https://github.com/pallets/click
You'd have to be a fool or incredibly sure of yourself to compete against one of Armin Ronacher's projects. :)
Click is great, and I borrowed the decorator concept from Flask before I saw Click had done the same thing. It terms of how you use it there are a lot of similarities between Click and MILC.
Where Click and MILC part ways is in the underlying implementation. MILC uses the recommended and built-in Python modules whenever possible. Under the hood MILC is just argparse, logging, ConfigParser, and other standard modules abstracted just enough to make the right thing easy. Click on the other hand uses optparser, which has been deprecated in favor of argparser, and handles a lot of functionality itself rather than dispatching to included Python modules.
MILC does not insist upon a UTF-8 environment for Python 3 the way Click does. I understand Click's stance here but I'm hoping that the ecosystem has developed enough by now to make it no longer necessary. Time will tell if my opinion changes or not.
Whether you should use Click or MILC depends on the tradeoff you want to make. Would you rather use the Python modules everyone's already familiar with or dive into a world of custom code that attempts to make everything cleaner overall? Do you want one cohesive system or do you want to pull together disparate plugins and modules to build the functionality you need?
Click does not support a configuration file or logging out of the box, but there are plugins you can get to add this and other functionality to Click.
Clize has a nice approach with lots of mature and advanced functionality.
Clize uses function annotation to work, which may or may not fit with how you work. It also has a lot of arbitrary restrictions due to annotations, for example alt functions don't work with argument aliases.
Clize does not support a configuration file or logging.
https://github.com/prometheusresearch/cogs
Cogs seems interesting, but has its own dedicated CLI tool named cogs. You
don't create scripts directly but instead create Python functions that cogs
will call. This is not a paradigm that I want to use.
Cogs does not include config file support.
https://github.com/evanunderscore/defopt
Defopt is a great tool for turning functions into CLIs. Had I found this earlier I may not have written MILC at all. But I have written MILC, and there's some things I'm still not sure about. For example, I don't see a way to have script handle both subcommand and non-subcommand operation.
Defopt does not support a configuration file or logging.
https://github.com/docopt/docopt
Docopt has a large following, and some interesting ideas. But if you are someone who does not like the idea of using comments to define behavior you will not enjoy working with docopt.
Docopt has poor error handling. You have to do your own argument validation, and even when Docopt knows the passed arguments are invalid it does not return a useful error message to the user.
Docopt does not support config files.
https://github.com/google/python-fire
Fire is an interesting idea- turn any class into a CLI. Unfortunately this is useful more as a tool for introspection than building a good CLI.
Fire does not support a configuration file or logging.
https://github.com/micheles/plac
I like his idea about scaling down, and it's part of what drove me. But I don't want to go without functionality to scale down. MILC's idea of scaling down is working well for small programs.
Plac does not support a configuration file or logging.