Specify options in an file

Specify Pax Runner options in a text file

If you want to provide Pax Runner in a text file instead of command line you can use the --args option and specify the URL of a text file that contains the options.


pax-run --args=<URL>

By default (if --args is not specified) Pax Runner will look for and use, if available, a file named runner.args from the current directory. If your do not need this behavior you can ops4j:disable it.

If extra options / arguments are present in the command line beside the --args option then the command line options will have precedence.

Options file syntax

Options file must be a text file that contains one option per line. Beside the options the file can contain empty lines as well as commentary lines. Commentary lines are considered lines that start with # and those lines are skipped.
Here is an example:

runner.args


#Using Felix as a platform
--platform=felix

#Using version 1.4.0 of Felix
--version=1.4.1

Starting with release 0.20.0 of Pax Runner, you can specify the option values split over multiple lines, provided that the line ends with a "\". The next line will be appended to the previous line unless the next line is a blank line.


--vmo=-Doscar.embedded.execution=false\
 -Djava.library.path=native\
# VM option to specify loggin configuration file
 -Djava.util.logging.config.file=../conf/logging.properties

Usage examples

Here are some examples of using this option:

Use options read from a file named runner.args for the current directory (=directory Pax Runner was started):
pax-run --args=file:runner.args
Use options read from a file named runner.args from /home/foo/ directory:
pax-run --args=file:/home/foo/runner.args
Use options read from the web
pax-run --args=http://somewhere.org/foo

Disable arguments file lookup

If you do not specify the --args options and you do not want Pax Runner to look by default in the current directory for runner.args file, you can use the --noArgs. option.


pax-run --noArgs

This feature is only available starting with release 0.16.0 of Pax Runner.