Subject: Command-line argument code redone in lisp
From: James Amundson
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 09:24:58 -0600
I have now completed step two out of three in my revamp of the maxima
startup process. (Step one was to eliminate maxima-run-lisp; see the
message "Eliminated maxima-run-lisp;..." Step three will be to write a
working maxima.bat file for Windows.) All changes in this process should
be transparent to users. Internally, however, command-line arguments are
now handled (almost) entirely in Lisp. Previously, the command-line
arguments were parsed by the Bourne shell wrapper script, which passed
the resulting information along to the lisp image through environment
variables. It was a scheme of which Rube Goldberg would have been proud.
The original goal of the new system was to allow the windows version of
maxima to have full command-line functionality. As a bonus, the new code
should be much easier to maintain.
Unfortunately, my changes probably break ACL and OpenMCL. The lines that
need to be fixed are preceded by comments containing the string FIXME in
maxima.in and command-line.lisp. The changes should be trivial -- I
simply lack the ability to test with ACL and OpenMCL.
Please let me know if you see bugs in the new code.
--Jim