Python minimal program setup

main.py

def main(cli_args: List[str] = None) -> int:
    """
    `cli_args` makes it possible to call this function command-line-style
    from other Python code without touching sys.argv.
    """
    try:
        # Parsing with `argparse` and additional processing 
        # is usually lenghty enough to extract into separate functions.
        raw_config = _parse_cli(
            sys.argv[1:] if cli_args is None else cli_args)
        config = _validate_and_sanitize(raw_config)

        # Same exception raising idea as the simple approach
        do_real_work(config.foo, config.bar)

    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print('Aborted manually.', file=sys.stderr)
        return 1

    except Exception as err:
        # (in real code the `except` would probably be less broad)
        # Turn exceptions into appropriate logs and/or console output.

        # non-zero return code to signal error
        # Can of course be more fine grained than this general
        # "something went wrong" code.
        return 1

    return 0  # success

# __main__ support is still here to make this file executable without
# installing the package first.
if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main())

From https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/418600/best-practice-for-python-main-function-definition-and-program-start-exit