[MOAB-dev] cgm2moab as a script

[Jason Kraftcheck]

On 08/17/2010 04:02 PM, Tim Tautges wrote:
> One thing I've wondered about whether to do was to consolidate many of
> the tools we currently write separately (mbsize, mbconvert, cgm2moab,
> etc.), as scripts that all call into a single executable (written in
> C++, I guess).  This consolidated tool would have a single set of
> options, which would be quite large, but the individual scripts would
> have more limited option sets to be more manageable.  

This would be somewhat of a mess to maintain, and you'd probably run out of
single-letter options unless you a) had some options change the meaning of
others or b) changed the meaning of the options based on the executable name
(e.g. if the app is launched through a symlink named mbconvert, the behavior
is different.)

> The valgrind suite
> of tools operates like this, I think.  

The valgrind tools work as series of plugins (.so files) for a common
emulation engine (the main executable.)

> The motivation here would be to
> only have to implement the common options once, and also to have a
> fuller set of options than you'd get in any of the individual tools, if
> you wanted to access things that way.
> 

Some common code in a convenience library would accomplish this without the
need for one huge application.


- jason