Code snippet from optparse.py:

   344         self.help_position = min(max_len + 2, self.max_help_position)
   345         self.help_width = self.width - self.help_position

Where self.width is initialized with the COLUMNS environment variable. On narrow terminals it can happen that self.help_position < self.width, leading to an exception in textwrap.py:

    raise ValueError("invalid width %r (must be > 0)" % self.width)
ValueError: invalid width -15 (must be > 0)

A reasonable workaround would be to trim part of the help text instead of causing an exception.