General Use

Mélodium, as software, can be essentially resumed as a single executable binary.

The Mélodium binary doesn't require to be at any specific location on the system, and doesn't require more permissions nor privileges than a usual executable program. This said, it have to be in the PATH of the user in order to work correctly with standalone Mélodium script and program files.

If Mélodium has been installed through a system-dedicated installation method these requirements are met, such as with an installer on Windows or package on Linux.

Mélodium software is very similar to what can be found with other programming technologies, such as Python or Java, among others. The Mélodium executable binary is the implementation of the Mélodium programming language, and receive Mélodium script and program files to execute them.

Direct Call

Mélodium can be called directly through command line, using the melodium command, followed by the name of the script or program file that has to be executed.

By default, the main entrypoint will be used, and possible following parameters will be given to the designated treatment.

A Mélodium program can declare any number of entrypoints, and having a main one is optionnal. In general, a program with a main entrypoint is aimed to be used directly, while projects without main entrypoint (either none or multiple others) are libraries.

Calling a Mélodium program is as simple as:

melodium my_program.mel

And it is strictly equivalent to:

melodium my_program.mel main

If arguments needs to be passed to the program, they can be specified as any CLI arguments:

melodium my_program.mel [ENTRYPOINT] --my_number 42 --my_boolean true

To see what entrypoints a Mélodium program proposes, use the info command:

melodium info my_program.mel

For more CLI usage details, please refer to the Command Line Interface section.

Executable Scripts and Programs

Mélodium scripts files (with .mel extension) and packaged files (with .jeu extension) can be called directly as-is if they have been designed for this use by the authors.

On POSIX systems, it require for the file to be marked as executable (x permission), and in case of .mel file, to start with the #!/usr/bin/env melodium shebang line.

This means Mélodium scripts and programs can be called as simply as any shell or general executable file:

my_program.mel --my_number 42 --my_boolean true