[CC vm-dev]

On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 7:04 PM, K K Subbu <kksubbu.ml@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday 05 May 2017 02:11 PM, Andrei Chis wrote:

...
./pharo -help
unknown option: -help
Common <option>s:
�� --help�� print this help message, then exit

Then `./pharo -help` returns an exit code of 1 on mac/linux while
`./pharo --help` returns a exit code of 0 on mac and 1 on linux.

It is --help on Pharo and -help on other compiles (see below). Can anyone shed light on the legacy compatibility comment in :

---- platforms/unix/vm/sqUnixMain.c ----
1421�� /* legacy compatibility */�� /*** XXX to be removed at some time ***/
1422

Looking just at just the file, it appears this is comment is strongly associated with the code below,

but git blame [1] indicates the comment is 7 years old, while the code below is 7 months old. ��???��

[1] https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/blame/995e7aedc3b5aeb76904f92abbd8a7a1bcf8138f/platforms/unix/vm/sqUnixMain.c��

cheers -ben

��

1423 #ifdef PharoVM
1424 # define VMOPTION(arg) "--"arg
1425 #else
1426 # define VMOPTION(arg) "-"arg
1427 #endif

It's still not clear why running the vm to print the help of the version
should exit with an error code.

Agreed. I think --help and --version should return 0. I think the 1 was to catch incorrect/unknown arguments.

If I learn the rationale behind the change, I can propose a patch to fix this.

Regards .. Subbu