Position insensitive global options

[bnorick]

I want to have global options which are position insensitive. Consider the cli from uv, for example:

$ uv --help
An extremely fast Python package manager.

Usage: uv [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  auth     Manage authentication
  run      Run a command or script
  init     Create a new project
  add      Add dependencies to the project
  remove   Remove dependencies from the project
  version  Read or update the project's version
  sync     Update the project's environment
  lock     Update the project's lockfile
  export   Export the project's lockfile to an alternate format
  tree     Display the project's dependency tree
  format   Format Python code in the project
  tool     Run and install commands provided by Python packages
  python   Manage Python versions and installations
  pip      Manage Python packages with a pip-compatible interface
  venv     Create a virtual environment
  build    Build Python packages into source distributions and wheels
  publish  Upload distributions to an index
  cache    Manage uv's cache
  self     Manage the uv executable
  help     Display documentation for a command

Cache options:
  -n, --no-cache               Avoid reading from or writing to the cache, instead using a temporary directory for the duration of the operation [env: UV_NO_CACHE=]
      --cache-dir <CACHE_DIR>  Path to the cache directory [env: UV_CACHE_DIR=/path/to/cache]

Python options:
      --managed-python       Require use of uv-managed Python versions [env: UV_MANAGED_PYTHON=]
      --no-managed-python    Disable use of uv-managed Python versions [env: UV_NO_MANAGED_PYTHON=]
      --no-python-downloads  Disable automatic downloads of Python. [env: "UV_PYTHON_DOWNLOADS=never"]

Global options:
  -q, --quiet...                                   Use quiet output
  -v, --verbose...                                 Use verbose output
      --color <COLOR_CHOICE>                       Control the use of color in output [possible values: auto, always, never]
      --native-tls                                 Whether to load TLS certificates from the platform's native certificate store [env: UV_NATIVE_TLS=]
      --offline                                    Disable network access [env: UV_OFFLINE=]
      --allow-insecure-host <ALLOW_INSECURE_HOST>  Allow insecure connections to a host [env: UV_INSECURE_HOST=]
      --no-progress                                Hide all progress outputs [env: UV_NO_PROGRESS=]
      --directory <DIRECTORY>                      Change to the given directory prior to running the command
      --project <PROJECT>                          Run the command within the given project directory [env: UV_PROJECT=]
      --config-file <CONFIG_FILE>                  The path to a `uv.toml` file to use for configuration [env: UV_CONFIG_FILE=]
      --no-config                                  Avoid discovering configuration files (`pyproject.toml`, `uv.toml`) [env: UV_NO_CONFIG=]
  -h, --help                                       Display the concise help for this command
  -V, --version                                    Display the uv version

Use `uv help` for more details.

They have subcommands and then a set of global options (split across three groups named Cache, Python, and Global). The options in these groups can be passed before or after the subcommand without issue, e.g.,

$ uv run --no-cache python -c "print(42)"
42
$ uv --no-cache run python -c "print(42)"
42

Is there any way to implement something similar using tyro? I've tried several ways and I can get close but can't find one that feels good.

[brentyi]

Hi @bnorick! Sorry for the delayed reply here.

Global options: unfortunately I can only think of ways that feel hacky... part of this is because we build on argparse, where global arguments also don't seem well-supported: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62904585/support-global-arguments-before-or-after-sub-command-in-argparse

Features like this will be easy to implement once we move away from argparse (#334). But even then we would need to determine if demand for the feature is high enough to justify the maintenance overhead.