[plt-dev] Re: Generated files and co-existing copies of DrScheme

On Nov 20, Carl Eastlund wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> >
> > The general good direction, IMO, is to avoid environment variables
> > as much as possible.  So if you want to add a new knob, doing that
> > with a command line argument has better chances of being useful
> > and of staying around.  Do you have any *concrete* point for
> > preferring an environment variable over a command-line argument?
> 
> I am preferring consistency over inconsistency.

Right, and my point is that moving *consistently* to command-line
flags is good.  Otherwise, why would -X and -S get added in v4?


> However, since I am using the same kind of script as you for calling
> PLT executables -- the command line approach is only easy to use if
> we make sure every PLT executable can accept the same argument.  Do
> we have a single point of control for that?

If I had a use for such a flag, then I'd add it in my scripts.


> > This was mostly done, with the new command line arguments and with
> > changes that happened in the past.  PLTCOLLECTS might be more
> > difficult to pull out, but I won't cry when this is done.
> 
> What new command line arguments do we have for this?

`-S' and `-X'.  And `-U', which is going to interact in a funny way
with a PLTADDON option.


> The only ones I see are for collections; I don't see any for planet,
> scribble, or preferences -- any of the Mz/DrScheme generated files.

I'm talking about adding these through a command line argument instead
of an environment variable.  If we had arguments for these, then there
wouldn't be an issue to talk about?


> >> and a new nightly build will still clobber the local planet and
> >> scribble files of an older one with the same version.
> >
> > How?
> 
> How else would it work?  Where will it put these things, other than
> right where the previous build did?

It has only things from the PLT tree, it cannot clobber anything in
your local directories.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!