Register a SWIPL installed version?

[ssardina]

How can I tell swivm that I have some SWIPL version installed, say in /usr/local/swipl-git? I don't want swivm to download and compile, just want to register some that I have in the system

Thanks.

[fnogatz]

Nice idea! At first, I was thinking about new commands swivm register and swivm unregister, but maybe the simplest interface would be to just re-use the existing swivm alias by adding support for a path instead of only version numbers? So the interaction could be as follows:

> swivm ls
         v8.0.3
->      v8.1.28
default -> 8 (-> v8.1.28)

> swivm alias
default -> 8 (-> v8.1.28)

> swivm alias git /usr/local/swipl-git
git -> /usr/local/swipl-git

> swivm ls
         v8.0.3
->      v8.1.28
default -> 8 (-> v8.1.28)
git -> /usr/local/swipl-git

> swivm use git
Now using SWI-Prolog v8.3.3 (/usr/local/swipl-git)

> swivm unalias git
Deleted alias git - restore it with `swivm alias "git" /usr/local/swipl-git`

What do you think, @ssardina?

When I think about a possible implementation, I have the impression that this would result in allowing a path everywhere we currently expect version numbers or aliases (except for the commands ls-remote, version-remote, install), i.e. even swivm run /usr/local/swipl-git example.pl and swivm use /usr/local/swipl-git might be allowed. I am not yet sure if that's a nice consequence or possible sources of confusion 😃

[ssardina]

Definitively, I would reuse/generalize the existing alias option.

I am not sure I understand the problem you describe in the 2nd para. :-)