ACT tools that use the core act library all accept the following command-line options. These options should come first, before any tool-specific options.

The following options tend to be regularly used.

• -Ttechname: changes the technology configuration files to techname. This specifies that the config files are in directory $ACT_HOME/conf/techname. If an absolute path is specified, then that path is used as the directory location for configuration files.
• -ref=number: select refinement body, if it exists. Refinements can be nested, so the number specifies the number of refinement levels that should be expanded. The standard use case is -ref=1, where one level of refinement is selected.

The following options are used to customize configuration file options and to add a defined parameter (pbool or pint) to customize the ACT file behavior.

• -Dname=value: defines the specified parameter (either a pbool or a pint) as a global parameter that can then by used by the ACT file
• -cnf=file: reads in the specified file as an ACT configuration file (after the default files for the specified technology)

The following is used to control warning messages:

• -Wname:on or -Wname:off: turn on/off warnings. name can be:
  • empty_select : warn if all the guards in a selection statement in ACT (the core language, not the CHP/HSE sub-language) are false.
  • dup_pass : warn if an ACT tool registers a duplicate pass.
  • no_local_driver : warn if a local variable doesn't have a driver if detected during some of the ACT analysis passes.
  • double_expand : warn if an ACT tool attempts to expand an already expanded ACT object.
  • lang_subst : warn if an ACT tool uses a different language body within a process than the default choice.
  • shadow: warn if an ACT variable shadows another one in an outer scope.
  • dynamic_channel_access: warn if channel arrays that are accessed with runtime indices (dynamic arrays) are re-written using the standard idioms.
  • chp_bw_check: warn if a CHP expression uses subtraction or complement in a suspicious context.
  • all : all warnings

Additional options are:

• -Vname: turn on verbose log messages in the ACT library. Currently name can be:
  • config : print out absolute paths for the config files read. This goes to stderr by default
• -log=file: save log messages to the specified file
• -lev=level: set log level flags
• -opt=str: set option string for ACT getopt() API

A number of environment variables impact the operation of the ACT tools.

• ACT_HOME: this should be set to the directory of the ACT installation. Standard system-wide ACT libraries are located in $ACT_HOME/act, and this directory is part of the search path for ACT files that are imported.
• ACT_PATH: this is a colon-separated search path for ACT files (akin to the standard Unix PATH variable used by the shell). This is typically set to the root of an ACT project, so that all the ACT files in the project can be accessed relative to the specified path.
• ACT_STD_CMDLINE: An individual project might want to include a standard set of ACT options (e.g. -Ttech) for all ACT tool invocations. The environment variable ACT_STD_CMDLINE can be set to the standard command-line options.
• ACT_TECH: this environment variable is set by the core ACT library, and corresponds to the name of the technology specified by -T on the command-line (or the default technology, generic, otherwise).