Luke Boswell (May 28 2023 at 04:05): Luke Boswell (May 28 2023 at 04:05):I was attempting to build a roc binary and reached for a command line argument -o but we dont support roc build -o output input.roc. Just wondering why that is? Is it strange that the output binary is determined in the file?
Brendan Hansknecht (May 28 2023 at 04:12):This is similar to most build systems: cargo in rust, cmake or make (I think zig build where it would be defined in build.zig).
I think it is a question of if you see roc as a build coordinator/system or something that should compile individual files...
But that is just my guess.
Luke Boswell (May 28 2023 at 04:47):I don't have a strong opinion here, just noticed this while I was working on something. I have written another app which compiles some roc script files, but don't have a good way to know what the resulting binary will be called or where it will be located. I may be approaching this the wrong way, basically I'm experimenting with a CGI server which on load compiles all the "scripts" into binaries, and then on a request calls the roc binary/executable.
Richard Feldman (May 28 2023 at 11:20):I've actually been thinking about switching to this
Richard Feldman (May 28 2023 at 11:20):right now it's defined in the app module
Richard Feldman (May 28 2023 at 11:20):e.g. app "mybinaryname"
Richard Feldman (May 28 2023 at 11:20):that design is from ~2019 and I think maybe doing it at the command line might make more sense
Luke Boswell (May 29 2023 at 07:12):@Richard Feldman would you accept a PR for this change, or do we need more discussion to understand the implications? Do you have any thoughts on removing the app name string from the module header? I can create an issue to track this, and reference this conversation.
Anton (May 29 2023 at 10:10):If no "-o" is provided would we then default to the filename without ".roc"?
Richard Feldman (May 29 2023 at 11:23):Anton said:
If no "-o" is provided would we then default to the filename without ".roc"?
that sounds good - and with .exe on Windows
Richard Feldman (May 29 2023 at 11:23):yeah I think PR is fine!
Fábio Beirão (Jun 01 2023 at 12:47):@Anton I believe that once you have this PR you will fix the issue I opened a few minutes ago about empty app names, or even worse, app names with paths on it :sweat_smile:
Fábio Beirão (Jun 01 2023 at 12:49):So it is indeed important to implement the "if no -o is provided, we default to the filename (instead of the app name) :+1:
Anton (Jun 02 2023 at 08:51):Thanks for alerting us to the security issue @Fábio Beirão, I've made issue #5501 for first step fix. I've marked it an intermediate issue because I don't think it will be complicated but familiarity with the code base will make it easier. If no one wants to take it, I will.
Last updated: Jul 26 2025 at 12:14 UTC