How can I get argparse in Python 2.6?

Question

I have some Python 2.7 code written that uses the argparse module. Now I need to run it on a Python 2.6 machine and it won\'t work since argparse was added in 2.7.

I

Answer 1

When I had this need I just installed argparse using pip: pip install argparse. This worked fine for the python-2.6.6-66.el6_8.x86_64 that was installed on my vanilla CentOS 6.8 system. I later found out that this did not work on other systems running python-2.6.6-52.el6.x86_64. As a result I ended up copying argparse related files from one system to the other.

i.e. all files and directories beginning with argparse in /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages

Only after doing all this did I discover that I could have simply installed the python argparse rpm python-argparse that comes with both distributions.

i.e. yum install python-argparse