build: replace optparse for argparse in configure.py

[vccolombo]

Hello! I saw Issue #29813 and decided to take the challenge as my first commit to Node.
However while looking on what was done in PR #26725 I got confused about what is gyp_args and what that PR changed about it.

Currently, my PR fails when running gyp_args += args with error TypeError: 'Namespace' object is not iterable

Can anyone give me some help about this?

Checklist

• make -j4 test (UNIX), or vcbuild test (Windows) passes
• tests and/or benchmarks are included
• documentation is changed or added
• commit message follows commit guidelines

[richardlau]

However while looking on what was done in PR #26725 I got confused about what is gyp_args and what that PR changed about it.

Currently, my PR fails when running gyp_args += args with error TypeError: 'Namespace' object is not iterable

Probably needs someone more familiar with Python (cc @nodejs/python) but with optparse the parse() method returns args that were not consumed by the parser. I think this is an array (e.g. like sys.argv). A quick glance at the docs for argparse suggests the equivalent may be to use parse_known_args().

[cclauss]

My method of approaching this would be a separate repo to prove it all out. I would have one file that would be all the optparse stuff with as minimal changes as possible. I would have a second file that was my proposed solution using argparse. Each file would take in commandline args and print out the parsed args. Then I would have a test runner (Travis CI, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, etc.) and I would run the same set of inputs through both and see if the outputs matched. Does that make sense?

[cclauss]

As discussed at https://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html#argparse.Namespace try vars(args) to get a sense of what is inside.

[vccolombo]

Thank you very much for your help. I need some time to try it and I'll come back after that

[vccolombo]

Hello there. Really sorry for the delay. I got stuck with some stuff from college. I may need a couple of weeks to deliver something here. But I still want to work on and finish this. Hope you understand

Thanks!

[cclauss]

No rush on this one given that both Python 3.8 (released yesterday) and 3.9 (1+ years away) support the deprecated module. If you are not warped up in one month then I will take a whack at it.

[BridgeAR]

Ping @vccolombo@cclauss

[vccolombo]

Hi!

I wasn't able to finish it, sorry about that. I though it would be easier when I saw the Issue, and now I'm on a new job so it's even harder to find time to tackle it. Really sorry again.

Thank you for your time

[BridgeAR]

@vccolombo thank you for the work!