pypdl vs aria2p+aria2c

[AClon314]

Currently I'm using aria2p[tui], and refactoring my bad code.

aria2p is not so good at:

1. I have to do some monkey patch to aria2p to get the current speed and filepath, which make the code more complicated and frustrated me at some point.
2. Need to use package manager like conda/apt/dnf/winget/brew to install aria2c first.

But the advantage of aria2p is that:

1. if your python script crash, the aria2c can continue downloading because they are different sub-progresses.
2. aria2p have TUI, I can use TUI on my remote server to manually manage download queue. I'm too lazy to set RPC port.

Here's 2 question:

1. Is there any advice that how to choose the suitable lib for my project?
2. I'm wondering what's the initial reason to create pypdl?

[mjishnu]

1. It all depends on your use case. pypdl doesn’t offer crash protection. If your script crashes frequently and you need downloads to continue regardless, I would recommend aria2. Also, pypdl lacks a built‑in CLI, so you’d have to build one yourself. Another point is that aria2, as an external program, is not limited by the Python GIL, so can result in better performance (since you are integrating and using it via aria2p then there won't be much performance gain since you need to implement some kind of IPC which negates any gain and potentially less performant here since this is mostly i/o bound but idk). In short, if you prefer a pure Python‑based solution with more control and don’t mind handling some of the limitations yourself, go for pypdl; if you need crash protection, TUI support, aria2 is your better choice.

2. I have another project called alt app installer. While developing it, I encountered a problem, the download link expires after about 30 minutes, causing large downloads to fail halfway. I needed a solution that could retry failed downloads and resume them with a new URL (generated by a function, in my case). I experimented with several libraries, but none provided the exact functionality I required, which led me to develop pypdl.