Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

In the current code, pywikibot.handleArgs() must be called before pagegenerators.GeneratorFactory(), as pagegenerators.GeneratorFactory.__init__() calls pywikibot.Site().

If pagegenerators.GeneratorFactory() is called first, the default site per user-config is used, and command line args (-family -lang -user) are ignored.  See bug 63800.

This could be almost completely fixed by changing GeneratorFactory.site to be a property, loaded on access.  That prevents the typical coding bug which look like:

  genFactory = pagegenerators.GeneratorFactory()
  for arg in pywikibot.handleArgs():
    if genFactory.handleArg(arg):
       pass

The current solution is to use and promote the pattern:

  local_args = pywikibot.handleArgs()
  genFactory = pagegenerators.GeneratorFactory()
  for arg in local_args:
    if genFactory.handleArg(arg):
       pass

However it doesnt prevent this:

  genFactory = pagegenerators.GeneratorFactory()
  genFactory.handleArg('-file:' + filename):
  ...
  pywikibot.handleArgs()

One way to prevent that is to raise an exception in pywikibot.handleArgs if it is called after pywikibot.Site() has instantiated a default site, and possibly only if -family/-lang/-user are supplied on the command line.

Another approach (very dodgy) is for pywikibot to know which Site object is the 'default' site, and pywikibot.handleArgs() change that object if -family/-lang/-user are supplied on the command line.