Launch Click CLI Application from inside python code

I would like to integrate a python CLI written using click into a python CLI application built using another framework. Rewriting the calling application is not an option.

As part of the integration, I need to invoke the click CLI from within code passing the arguments it should consume directly. How do I do this?

For a concrete example, consider that I'd invoke this as foobar theclickcli <args> where foobar is the CLI not written in click and theclickcli is a subcommand that should invoke my click CLI with its arguments (<args>).

I see that click offers the click.testing.CLIRunner class which allows invoking a group or command. However, the documentation notes that:

"...[this] should really only be used for testing as they change the entire interpreter state for simplicity and are not in any way thread-safe".

Is there an "idiomatic" way of invoking a click CLI (not just a subcommand) given an argv argument list like in argparse?

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