wanted: smarter runtime argument parsing that doesn't capture --help unconditionally

[Attila Lendvai]

problem:

if someone wants to produce an executable then there's no way to control important runtime options. this is mostly because it's too late to change them at the point the lisp code gets control (unfortunately the heap size is currently one of those).

current solution:

theres a :save-runtime-options argument for save-lisp-and-die, but it's cumbersome and will always be only a partial solution. (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/sbcl/+bug/450280)

suggested solution:

similarly how haskell does this (see http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/runtime-control.html) we could have not only an --end-runtime-options marker but also a start marker.

before a custom toplevel function is called, the runtime option parsing should process and delete the runtime related stuff from the arguments.

[Attila Lendvai (attila-lendvai)]

if this ever gets implemented, then there should also be a programmatically reachable constant storing the help text for the usage, so that custom applications can print it with their own --help text.