[OpenSCAD] Feature Requests

[Ralf Schlatterbeck]

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 10:29:49AM +0100, Clifford Wolf wrote:
> > On linux there is a kernel support to discover file changes, so no need
> > to poll every second.
> 
> btw: windows and mac osx also have APIs for this:
> FileSystemWatcher (Win32) and FSEvents (OSX)
> 
> > I think it is the easiest solution. And it is very scriptable
> > friendly. Even a bash script can control openscad.
> 
> its a bit hackish but I like it because of its simplicity..
> 
> as long as there is no need to read back information from openscad this
> sounds like a good solution for me.

A mechanism like this needs a staging directory -- where the command
file is written and then moved to the final directory watched by the
consuming program (openscad). Otherwise you have a race-condition: The
program still writing the file may not yet be ready when the file is
already consumed by openscad. Given this complication I'd vote for a TCP
connection, this can also return results to the calling process.

Creating a simple command-line utility that can be used in shellscripts
for sending commands to openscad would make that method equally easy to
use.

Ralf
-- 
Dr. Ralf Schlatterbeck                  Tel:   +43/2243/26465-16
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