[swift-evolution] [Pitch][stdlib] Command Line Option Parsing & Help

[Chris Lattner]

> On Aug 17, 2016, at 9:41 AM, Will Field-Thompson via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> I think it would be great to have something like this (at least the "Arguments" component) as part of the standard distribution — maybe as a corelib rather than as part of the standard library. Seeing as this is certainly not in scope for phase 1 of Swift 4, maybe it would be better to start this as an external library with the aim of having it brought into corelibs at some point in the future?

I agree.  I’d love to see this happen some day (and this is part of the rationale for moving Process.arguments to CommandLine.arguments), but it is out of scope for Swift4s1, and we don’t have a process for large scale new library functionality like this (yet).

When/if we do, I suspect it will highly prize libraries that already have a proven track record of wide use in the Swift community.  As such, I’d recommend building this functionality as a SwiftPM package in the meantime, or extending one of the ones that already exist.

-Chris