This page will describe various ways to start wfview from a command-line with command-line arguments. These arguments are most useful to start wfview from a specific settings file or to enable debug-level logging.

How to supply arguments

To supply arguments, one must generally open a terminal and then enter in the name of the program followed by the arguments. For example, from linux, assuming wfview is within your current $PATH:

wfview --argument

From macOS, there are two ways. One way is to change directory to the inside of the application bundle, and then to issue commands like so:

/Applications/wfview.app/Contents/MacOS/wfview --argument

You can drag the wfview.app icon into the terminal and edit the text.

However, it may be easier within macOS do it like this:

open /Applications/wfview.app --args --argument

With Microsoft Windows, you will need to open a cmd.exe window. From there, you can drag the wfview.exe icon into the cmd window. This should enter in the full path of the executable. Once entered, you may add arguments to the text.

Most commonly used arguments

The most commonly used arguments are as follows:

Settings file

To specify an alternate settings file, the --settings argument may be supplied followed by either an absolute path (generally starting with a slash), a relative path (starting from the current working directory), or simply a filename. Specifying only a filename is the preferred and simplest method; wfview will automatically generate a full filename to the operating system’s user-writable application settings folder. On linux, this would be ~/.local/wfview/wfview. The file doesn’t need to initially exist, wfview will create the specified file when you press “Save Settings”.

You can read more about the settings file format here. A general strategy is to simply supply --settings followed by your radio’s name:

wfview --settings ic-718.conf

Once wfview is set up (under the Settings tab), do not forget to press “Save Settings”. wfview will then write the settings file to disk, and you will from then on be able to immediately open wfview to your various radios simply by making desktop shortcuts that include the needed settings file within the arguments. Here is how one of mine looks for linux. I simply made it by right-clicking on the wfview icon within the applications menu, and choosing “add to desktop”. From there, I customized the launcher to include the needed command-line arguments:

 

Debug Mode

To enter debug mode, simply pass --debug to wfview. This will cause wfview to log much more information to the log file, including the contents of most commands and most radio replies (except for periodic polling commands and spectrum data).

wfview --debug

Full List of Supported Command-Line Arguments

The following is a list of all supported command-line arguments. Many are intended for development use only and are not advisable to be used. The commands are listed in their short and long formats. The parsing of the commands takes place in main.cpp.

• -d --debug
  • Enter debug mode. Causes more verbose logging and additional features to become visible. Many of those features will be incomplete.
• -l --logfile
  • Specify alternate location for the log file.
• -s --settings
  • Specify settings file. Path may be absolute, starting with a slash, may be relative from the current working directory, or may be a simple filename, to which wfview will determine the correct path for user-accessable application data for your operating system. We recommend not specifying a path, merely specify a filename. A file that doesn’t exist yet will be automatically created when you Save Settings. DO NOT specify path names using “~“, as this will create a directory within the application data folder named “~”. This is a qt bug.
• -h --help
  • Show help text and exit