This is another piece of long-overdue refactoring similar to the
recent commit e3796cb77. But where that one dealt with normalisation
of stuff already stored _in_ a Conf by whatever means (including, in
particular, handling a user typing 'username@host.name' into the
Hostname box of the GUI session dialog box), this one deals with
handling argv entries and putting them into the Conf.
This isn't exactly a pure no-functional-change-at-all refactoring. On
the other hand, it isn't a full-on cleanup that completely
rationalises all the user-visible behaviour as well as the code
structure. It's somewhere in between: I've preserved all the behaviour
quirks that I could imagine a reason for having intended, but taken
the opportunity to _not_ faithfully replicate anything I thought was
clearly just a bug.
So, for example, the following inconsistency is carefully preserved:
the command 'plink -load session nextword' treats 'nextword' as a host
name if the loaded session hasn't provided a hostname already, and
otherwise treats 'nextword' as the remote command to execute on the
already-specified remote host, but the same combination of arguments
to GUI PuTTY will _always_ treat 'nextword' as a hostname, overriding
a hostname (if any) in the saved session. That makes some sense to me
because of the different shapes of the overall command lines.
On the other hand, there are two behaviour changes I know of as a
result of this commit: a third argument to GUI PuTTY (after a hostname
and port) now provokes an error message instead of being silently
ignored, and in Plink, if you combine a -P option (specifying a port
number) with the historical comma-separated protocol selection prefix
on the hostname argument (which I'd completely forgotten even existed
until this piece of work), then the -P will now override the selected
protocol's default port number, whereas previously the default port
would win. For example, 'plink -P 12345 telnet,hostname' will now
connect via Telnet to port 12345 instead of to port 23.
There may be scope for removing or rethinking some of the command-
line syntax quirks in the wake of this change. If we do decide to do
anything like that, then hopefully having it all in one place will
make it easier to remove or change things consistently across the
tools.
PuTTY README
============
This is the README file for the PuTTY installer distribution. If
you're reading this, you've probably just run our installer and
installed PuTTY on your system.
What should I do next?
----------------------
If you want to use PuTTY to connect to other computers, or use PSFTP
to transfer files, you should just be able to run them from the
Start menu.
If you want to use the command-line-only file transfer utility PSCP,
you will probably want to put the PuTTY installation directory on
your PATH. On Windows 7 and similar versions, you can do this at
Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system
settings > Environment Variables.
Some versions of Windows will refuse to run HTML Help files (.CHM)
if they are installed on a network drive. If you have installed
PuTTY on a network drive, you might want to check that the help file
works properly. If not, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896054
for information on how to solve this problem.
What do I do if it doesn't work?
--------------------------------
The PuTTY home web site is
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Here you will find our list of known bugs and pending feature
requests. If your problem is not listed in there, or in the FAQ, or
in the manuals, read the Feedback page to find out how to report
bugs to us. PLEASE read the Feedback page carefully: it is there to
save you time as well as us. Do not send us one-line bug reports
telling us `it doesn't work'.
b9a25510b0