[Mono-dev] Cross-platform command-lines

[Charlie Poole]

Hi Miguel,

> > I haven't but I'll take a look. Do you use the double-dash 
> convention 
> > as well? I wonder if that's something windows users can get 
> accustomed 
> > to?
> 
> It seems that the majority of the flags on Windows take the 
> form /word but they tend to accept -word.

That's true for most user-facing apps anyway. Commands like
xcopy take cumulative flags, but not everyone is comfortable
with them.
 
> In Unix historically options after a single dash are single 
> letters, and
> they are cumulative.   For instance "ls -lt" does not mean the option
> "lt", it means "l" and "t".   For word options, people 
> adopted a --word
> scheme.
> 
> In Mono, when we had to be compatible with a command on 
> Windows we kept the /word, -word convention as opposed to the 
> Unix convention (less work
> on changing Makefiles or existing scripts).   In a few cases we still
> recognize the Unix options.
> 
> You will have to adopt a naming scheme (-word or -letters) 
> and go with it. 

Thanks - I'll think about a consistent scheme and look at getOptions. 
My little utility for extracting test results from an nunit xml file
will be the test bed for this.

Charlie

> Miguel.
>