Currently f2py has two separate paths within f2py2e which do "almost the same thing". run_main is supposed to do everything but -c and run_compile() is supposed to compile to a module. There is a lot of technical debt being carried here, run_compile() shouldn't be doing anything different from run_main in the first place. This also leads to subtle bugs since the results of -c and regular f2py runs are often different. It also makes it hard to test the CLI well (at the very least, doubles the number of possible tests).