[FR] [default: ] vs. (default: )

[DimitriPapadopoulos]

What's the problem this feature will solve?

Is there a reason why the command line help text sometimes displays default values of user options inside brackets [] (13 occurrences):

setuptools/setuptools/_distutils/text_file.py

Line 59 in 8aa9855

errors [default: 'strict']

and sometimes inside parentheses () (10 occurrences):

setuptools/setuptools/_distutils/command/clean.py

Line 17 in 8aa9855

('build-base=', 'b', "base build directory (default: 'build.build-base')"),

Describe the solution you'd like

How about standardizing the help text syntax?

Alternative Solutions

No response

Additional context

See also:

• [default: ] vs. (default: ) wheel#616
• [default: ] vs. (default: ) distutils#251

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct

[abravalheri]

I don't think there is a particular reason for that. These things tend to happen if we don't have a tool that automatically enforces one option.

Also having the code maintained in different repositories piles up with the problem.
I believe that in the future the development of bdist_wheel will be done in the setuptools repository. But it is very likely that pypa/distutils will be kept separated (at least until the oldest Python supported is 3.12).