Command-line options for the IDE

The PureBasic IDE allows you to modify the paths and files being used from the command-line. This allows you to create several shortcuts that start the IDE with different configurations for different users, or for different projects.

There are also options for compiling PureBasic projects directly from the command-line. Building a project from the command-line involves the same actions like at choosing the 'Build Target' or 'Build all Targets' from the compiler menu.

General options: 
  /VERSION                 displays the IDE version and exits
  /HELP or /?              displays a description of the command-line arguments
Options for launching the IDE: 
  /P <Preferences file>    loads/saves all the configuration to/from the given file
  /T <Templates file>      loads/saves the code templates from/to the given file
  /A <tools file>          loads/saves the configuration of the external tool from/to this file
  /S <Source path>         overwrites the "Source path" setting from the preferences
  /E <Explorer path>       starts the Explorer tool with the given path
  /L <Line number>         moves the cursor to the given line number in the last opened file
  /H <HistoryDatabase>     specify the file to use for the session history database
  /NOEXT                   disables the registering of the .pb extension in the registry
  /LOCAL                   puts all preferences in the PureBasic directory instead of the user profile location
  /PORTABLE                the same as /LOCAL and /NOEXT combined
Options for building projects: 
  /BUILD <file>            specifies the project file to build
  /TARGET <target>         specifies the target to build (the default is to build all targets)
  /QUIET                   hides all build messages except errors
  /READONLY                does not update the project file after compiling (with new access time and build counters)
The default files for /P /T and /A are saved in the %APPDATA%\PureBasic\ directory on the system.

The /NOEXT command is useful when you have several different PB versions at once (for testing of beta versions for example), but want the .pb extension to be associated with only one of them. The /PORTABLE command can be used to keep all configuration inside the local directory to easily copy PureBasic to different computers (or run it from USB sticks for example).

Example: 
  PureBasic.exe Example.pb /PORTABLE


You can also put the filenames of source files to load on the command-line. You can even specify wildcards for them (so with "*.pb" you can load a whole directory).