Re: [buckminster-dev] Action output?

[kenneth@xxxxxxxxx]

> > So what if we just strip off all fancy stuff that I proposed originally
> > and just keep a --output command line option to perform? It would then
> > map to the predefined property 'buckminster.output' for all actions. It
> > may of course be ignored too, that's up to the actor implementation but
> > we would establish a little more then just a convention and it would be
> > a bit more user-friendly.
>
> Yup, sounds good. It's a simple and no-nonsense 'shortcut'. We still
> need the '--definefile' stuff also for persistence of a set of props,
> and somehow we'd need to include this prop in that set. Obviously can
> be as simple as just allowing usage of the 'buckminster.output' prop
> name...

Dang, I just realized something...

Given the current workings of the perform command, we can't have a  
--output flag that does things the way just discussed. The reason is  
that we have previously said that all properties defined is sent to  
all actions. This means that *all* actions would see a  
'buckminster.output' pointing to the same location...bad.

With my suggestion, the problem wouldn't be exactly the same since the  
name of the actual property could then be much more specific and with  
a reasonable chance not be interpretable by other components/actions.

Still, I now think I don't like that either - far to great a chance  
that a property name is used by different actions for different  
things; we pollute everyone's namespace.

I think we must come up with a way to qualify properties so that they  
can be sent only to one, some or all actions. Yes, this can make a  
command line really horrible, but there's no real alternative to  
satisfy this problem. Well there is - maybe we should come up with a  
persisted xml format that provides a 'command line' (i.e. so we'd be  
able to say 'perform <pfile>' rather than a long and bulky  
commandline. Perhaps there should be a way to do the bulky commandline  
also - in which case the 'pfile' could just be a commandline more  
nicely formatted in a file. But a nice editable xml format is always  
nicer and could then be used in the UI too as a quick way to load  
complete settings for a 'invoke action' dialog.

Thoughts?

ken1