Command-line syntax, shebang scripts (was Re: [ENH] Command-line argument access in the image)

[Brian Rice]

I've proceeded with changing the command-line argument convention to  
require --image OR -i as an option keyword for specifying a non- 
default image.

I also added support for #!-prefixed scripts to the load: function,  
where it will ignore everything to the end of the line. In any case,  
"#!/usr/local/bin/slate --load " as the first line of a marked- 
executable Slate source file will make Slate load and run it  
immediately. Specifying an image is now obviously possible for this  
setup ("#!vm -i <image> --load"), which the previous command-line  
grammar did not allow, and this was my reason for changing it.

Alpha images have been updated with the new load: method, and some VM  
sources have been updated, but not the Pidgin core VM files.

In the future, I think the trick to keeping Slate easier to work with  
is to improve the ability to use a standard image from anywhere. I  
got a good suggestion to use argv[0], the program's name as invoked,  
to select the directory where the default image will be searched-for.  
This would also require slate.image to be installed with the VM in / 
usr/local/lib/slate/, but this will probably not happen immediately.

There are some hack-ish possibilities for Windows users to get this  
same kind of functionality, but for now I don't have definite ideas,  
so I'm going to hold off unless someone assists with that.

On Dec 27, 2005, at 8:12 PM, Brian Rice wrote:

> On Dec 27, 2005, at 6:50 PM, Brian Rice wrote:
>> Also, boot.c currently processes its arguments in a simplistic  
>> way, so that extra arguments that you want to pass to the image  
>> must be followed by the image name. E.g.
>>
>> "slate --load src/lib/memoryarea.slate slate.image"
>>
>> Is generally needed; you cannot skip the image name yet. I may  
>> write some code that does guess-work in trying to figure out if  
>> the last argument is a valid image name, and then have it try the  
>> default if that doesn't work.
>
> Another option is to require --image <filename> to specify an image  
> file. This is more verbose, but it does keep everything unambiguous.
>
> Does anyone have a problem or preference among these options?

--
-Brian
http://tunes.org/~water/brice.vcf

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : /archives/slate/attachments/20051227/54912843/PGP.pgp