Once: start something else on the next start, and only that one
A program that owns the whole machine had nowhere to run. It cannot be started from the shell, because starting it means there is no shell, and pointing boot.cfg at it means a machine that keeps starting it - which is a poor place to find a mistake in something written five minutes ago. Once writes /System/Boot/once.cfg, in the same format as boot.cfg and read with the same routines, because a second format for one setting would be a second format. The loader reads it before boot.cfg and DELETES IT BEFORE IT JUMPS, which is the only moment there is: after the jump the loader does not exist. Consumed by being read rather than by working, so a one shot that hangs cannot hang twice - the request is gone before the image ran, and the next start reads boot.cfg like any other. THE BOOT STATE IS NOT TOUCHED, and the first version got that wrong. It marked the start the way any other start is marked, and then every successful bare metal boot reported that it had never arrived - because a program with the whole machine has no filesystem to clear a mark with and is doing nothing wrong by not having one. Found by running it: the image printed its line and the next start still said the last one did not. Three disks, each a start further along, so none of the tests depends on another having run. The loop is closed on the machine now: write it in Edit, assemble it with Asm, ask for it with Once, restart, watch it own the machine, and the system comes back without being asked.
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@@ -361,6 +361,7 @@ from every assembly file in it. Several are old programs written for the bare ma
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| Snake | A game. Draws a whole screen with cursor addressing and steers with single keys, asking the console once a frame and never waiting. |
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| Keys | The console interrupting rather than being asked. The only one that brings a vector of its own, which is what the version two format exists for. |
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| Say | Prints whatever it was told, which is the shortest thing that shows osArgument working. |
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| Once | Asks the loader to start something else on the next start, and only that one, in 569 bytes. |
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| Status | Says what the last program made of what it was asked to do, in 222 bytes. The shell keeps the number and does not print it; this is how a person looks. |
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| Settle | Says how the last start went and tells the machine to stop falling back, in 353 bytes. A program rather than a shell word, because the shell is for what cannot be done without it. |
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| Files | Writes a file, reads it back, renames it and deletes it, in 675 bytes, including nothing but the service names. It is what says a program does not need a filesystem inside it. |
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