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:

• -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.
• -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)
• -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 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.
  • all : turn on all warnings
• -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

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.