Auto-load session setups if they exist and auto-save them if desired

[pulseview.git] / manual / cli.txt

== Command-line Interface

Even though PulseView has a graphical user interface, there is also a command-line interface that
you can make use of. It is meant to provide functions for convenience and debug purposes, not to
replace the user interface itself.

Running 

	pulseview -h

gives you a list of these functions.

Since PulseView can't automatically scan for devices connected to a COM port (ttySx on Linux) or
Ethernet, you can tell it to look for a specific device using the -d or --driver parameter. Its
usage is the same as for sigrok-cli. For example:

	pulseview -d lecroy-xstream:conn=vxi/192.168.178.20/111

Also, just as with sigrok-cli, you can specify -i / --input-file and -I / --input-format to open
a file on startup. Without -I, it is assumed that the file is in the native sigrok format (.sr).
You can also specify more than one file but they are all expected to be in the same format then.
Example:

	pulseview -i data.csv -I csv:samplerate=3000000

The remaining parameters are mostly for debug purposes:

	-V / --version		Shows the release version
	-l / --loglevel		Sets the libsigrok/libsigrokdecode log level (max is 5)
	-D / --dont-scan	Don't auto-scan for devices
	-c / --clean		Don't restore previous sessions on startup

Of these, -D / --dont-scan can be useful when PulseView gets stuck during the startup device scan.
No such scan will be performed then, allowing the program to start up but you'll have to scan for
your acquisition device(s) manually before you can use them.

Another potentially useful option is -c / --clean, which can be used when PulseView doesn't start
up and you don't know what could cause this.

Thus, the combination of both parameters can be seen as some kind of "safe mode" for PulseView:

	pulseview -c -D