Adding --out:exe_name flag to a bare nimscript crashes compilation

[monkey-w1n5t0n]

Compiling with nim c --out:hello_world main.nim works fine, but adding the --out:hello_world flag to main.nims crashes compilation.

Example

Contents of a recreate.sh shell script:

mkdir recreate_bug && cd recreate_bug

# This works
echo "echo(\"hello world\")" > main.nim
echo "--run" > main.nims
nim c main.nim 

# This also works
nim c --out:hello_world main.nim 

# This doesn't work :(
echo "--out:hello_world" >> main.nims
nim c main.nim

Current Output

(comments added for clarity)

~/code/bug $ ./recreate.sh
## First
Hint: used config file 'C:\Program Files\Nim\nim-1.4.4\config\nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file 'C:\Program Files\Nim\nim-1.4.4\config\config.nims' [Conf]
....
Hint:  [Link]
Hint: 29919 lines; 0.514s; 31.738MiB peakmem; Debug build; proj: C:\Users\Scored\code\bug\recreate_bug\main.nim; out: C:\Users\Scored\code\bug\recreate_bug\main.exe [SuccessX]
Hint: C:\Users\Scored\code\bug\recreate_bug\main.exe  [Exec]
hello world

## Second
Hint: used config file 'C:\Program Files\Nim\nim-1.4.4\config\nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file 'C:\Program Files\Nim\nim-1.4.4\config\config.nims' [Conf]
....
Hint:  [Link]
Hint: 29919 lines; 0.506s; 31.785MiB peakmem; Debug build; proj: C:\Users\Scored\code\bug\recreate_bug\main.nim; out: C:\Users\Scored\code\bug\recreate_bug\hello_world [SuccessX]
Hint: C:\Users\Scored\code\bug\recreate_bug\hello_world  [Exec]
hello world

## Third
Hint: used config file 'C:\Program Files\Nim\nim-1.4.4\config\nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file 'C:\Program Files\Nim\nim-1.4.4\config\config.nims' [Conf]
fatal.nim(49)            sysFatal
Error: unhandled exception: index out of bounds, the container is empty [IndexDefect]

Expected Output

## Third should also produce an executable named hello_world and run it to print hello world.

Additional Information

Windows 10 Home (using git-bash to run the script)

$ nim -v
Nim Compiler Version 1.4.4 [Windows: amd64]
Compiled at 2021-02-23
Copyright (c) 2006-2020 by Andreas Rumpf

active boot switches: -d:release

[timotheecour]

@lm-w1n5t0n PR welcome, it shouldn't be too hard:

• in commands.nim, the "out" flag should given an error if main project is a nims file or in other cases too, eg for commands where out doesnt' make sense (eg: nim danger + a few others)

[monkey-w1n5t0n]

Would love to contribute but I've only just started learning Nim, so it will take a while to build up to that point.

Just to clarify, this is not supposed to work? I thought that the nimscript file could store any of the flags that can be used when calling the compiler directly, and I don't see why specifying the output binary location should be an exception.

[timotheecour]

I misread, i thought you were calling nim e --out:foo main.nims which should give a CT error since no binary is produced in this case

indeed this should work:

nim c main with main.nims containing --out:foo

you can build a debug version of compiler as follows https://nim-lang.github.io/Nim/intern.html#rebuilding-the-compiler and get a stacktrace, as a starting point