Tool Script Directives

Tool script directives are special attributes read by PyTower when it parses a tool script. They help make tool scripts more presentable, user-friendly, and register metadata. All of them are optional, but recommended for accessibility.

List of directives:

  • TOOL_NAME: Registers the name used by PyTower (by default it uses the script’s file name)

  • VERSION: Script version

  • AUTHOR: Script author

  • URL: External URL for more information (e.g., a link to a forum post)

  • INFO: Further info printed when calling pytower info <toolname>

  • PARAMETERS: Dictionary of required parameters and their types (registered as ToolParameterInfo instances)

  • IGNORE=True: Tells PyTower to skip over this script. Useful for shared libraries or utility scripts

  • NO_WRITE=True: Tells PyTower that this script does not modify the CondoData/.map file

By default PARAMETERS will be loaded as an empty dictionary. For examples involving the directives, see the built-in tool scripts

Example of PARAMETERS from rotate.py (as of v0.1.0):

PARAMETERS = {'rotation': ToolParameterInfo(dtype=xyz, description='Rotation to perform (in Euler angles and degrees)'),
              'local': ToolParameterInfo(dtype=bool, description='Whether to only rotate locally', default=False)}

The {...} defines a Python dictionary (dict), where the parameter name is the key ('rotation', 'local') and the value is ToolParameterInfo(...). ToolParameterInfo is a class that registers information about each parameter. In the above example, rotation is registered as an xyz data type (input as x,y,z) parameter with the description Rotation to perform (in Euler angles and degrees).

By default, each parameter in PARAMETERS is required. To make a parameter optional, the default argument must be passed to the ToolParameterInfo constructor. In the above example, 'local' has the data type bool, has the description Whether to only rotate locally, and has the default value False, which makes it an optional parameter.

To check that variable descriptions are formatted correctly, try running pytower info <TOOL_NAME> where <TOOL_NAME> is the TOOL_NAME of your tool script. URL and INFO are also displayed here in pytower info.