Summary of Runtime Parameters – Absolutely Baching

1.0 Introduction

Giocoso's behaviour can be altered by invoking it with any of a large number of possible runtime parameters. These take the form of double-hyphen+keyword, sometimes with a value assigned to the keyword, sometimes with no value but merely the keyword alone. These parameters are 'tacked on' to the basic command to run Giocoso, so that Giocoso's default behaviour is modified or changed in some way. For example, the bare command giocoso actually means 'run Giocoso in Database Play Mode, the database name will be 'music', album art should be displayed at medium size, no scrobbling will take place' and so on. However, the command giocoso --dbname=main --artsize=none --scrobble means 'run Giocoso in Database Play Mode, the database name will be 'main', album art should not be displayed at all, scrobbling will take place once play has completed'.

The runtime parameters therefore give Giocoso flexibility and capabilities to exploit that you may not have realised could be exploited! There are, in fact, more than 45 possible runtime parameters at the time of writing: you do not need to be intimately familiar with more than a few of them, fortunately! Giocoso's defaults are such that most of them might never need to be used, unless you have very specific requirements.

There are four broad category of runtime parameter:

The links above give access to a page describing each parameter in detail, with each type of parameter discussed separately. If you prefer to see all parameters at once, click here.

Note that some runtime parameters can be set in the Giocoso persistent configuration file, which is discussed elsewhere. Note that if the configuration file contains a setting for a particular parameter, it can still be supplied as a runtime parameter with a different value -and in that case, it's the runtime value that takes precedence.

Also note that in version 2.01, Giocoso acquired a menu front-end (launch Giocoso with the command giocoso --menu to use it). The menu allows most aspects of Giocoso's behaviour to be determined by taking simple, numbered menu options, rather than having to type long Giocoso launch commands containing dozens of runtime parameters. The parameters are still there to be used if needed, but the menu interface makes using them all now optional. See this page for details about using the menu instead of typing runtime parameters directly -but remember, this is only for version 2.01 and above.