Command Line

Table of Contents

• Command Line Options
• Compile Tool Options
• Windows Specifics

FLUID can be used in interactive and in command line mode.

If launched with -c, followed by a project filename, FLUID will convert the project file into C++ source files without ever opening a window (or opening an X11 server connection under Linux/X11). This makes FLUID a great command line tool for build processes with complex project files that reference external resources. For example, an image referenced by a .fl file can be modified and recompiled into the application binary without the need to reload it in an interactive FLUID session.

Command Line Options

To launch FLUID in interactive mode from the command line, you can give it an optional name of a project file. If no name is given, it will launch with an empty project, or with the last open project, if so selected in the application setting dialog.

The ampersand & is optional on Linux machines and lets FLUID run in its own new process, giving the shell back to the caller.

fluid filename.fl &

If the file does not exist you will get an error pop-up, but if you dismiss it you will be editing a blank file of that name.

FLUID understands all of the standard FLTK switches before the filename:

-display host:n.n
-geometry WxH+X+Y
-title windowtitle
-name classname
-iconic
-fg color
-bg color
-bg2 color
-scheme schemename

Compile Tool Options

FLUID can also be called as a command-line only tool to create the .cxx and .h file from a .fl file directly. To do this type:

fluid -c filename.fl

This is the same as the menu File > Write Code... . It will read the filename.fl file and write filename.cxx and filename.h. Any leading directory on filename.fl will be stripped, so they are always written to the current directory. If there are any errors reading or writing the files, FLUID will print the error and exit with a non-zero code. You can use the following lines in a Makefile to automate the creation of the source and header files:

my_panels.h my_panels.cxx: my_panels.fl
        fluid -c my_panels.fl

Most versions of "make" support rules that cause .fl files to be compiled:

.SUFFIXES: .fl .cxx .h
.fl.h .fl.cxx:
        fluid -c $<

Check README.CMake.txt for examples on how to integrate FLUID into the CMake build process.

If you use

fluid -cs filename.fl

FLUID will also write the "strings" for internationalization into the file 'filename.txt', 'filename.po', or 'filename.msg', depending on the chosen type of i18n (menu: 'File/Write Strings...').

Finally there is another option which is useful for program developers who have many .fl files and want to upgrade them to the current FLUID version. FLUID will read the filename.fl file, save it, and exit immediately. This writes the file with current syntax and options and the current FLTK version in the header of the file. Use

fluid -u filename.fl

to 'upgrade' filename.fl . You may combine this with -c or -cs.

Note

All these commands overwrite existing files w/o warning. You should particularly take care when running fluid -u since this overwrites the original .fl project file.

Windows Specifics

FLTK uses Linux-style forward slashes to separate path segments in file names. When running on Windows, FLUID will understand Microsoft drive names and backward slashes as path separators and convert them internally into forward slashes.

Under Windows, binaries can only be defined either as command line tools, or as interactive apps. FLTK generates two almost identical binaries under Windows. fluid.exe is meant to be used in interactive mode, and fluid-cmd.exe is generated for the command line. Both tools do exactly the same thing, except fluid-cmd.exe can use stdio to output error messages.