On 2/28/25 18:13, William F Pokorny wrote:
> Is the code smart enough to not get into a recursive 'include 
> ini=rerun.ini'. descent.

The answer is, no, where a user creates something like this in an ini file:

...
Continue_Trace=On
Create_Ini="continue.ini"
...
include_ini="continue.ini"
...

we get recursive inclusion of the continue.ini file.

To POV-Ray's credit, in all versions of POV-Ray I have in hand, the 
recursion does eventually stop and we get a vague parse error. I believe 
the general recursion depth limit for including files stops things from 
getting too out of control.

--

We can specify continue.ini on the command line - without triggering 
recursive inclusion - with any of:

povray include_ini=continue.ini
povray continue.ini
povray continue

POV-Ray does not write any include_ini="continue.ini" equivalent into 
the continue.ini file when it is specified on the command line. In other 
words, it avoids creating a recursive inclusion of the ini file in the 
saved options file.

Speaking of the create_ini= / +gi option; Unsure about the how robust it 
is in v3.7, but in v3.8 versions (including yuqk) be sure it is 
capturing all the settings you need to capture to re-run or continue a 
render. I've never done a survey of all the options, but I know for 
example, file_gamma= and display_gamma= are NOT captured with v3.8 
versions and they should be.

In a few hours of testing I picked up a handful of other small details 
which I've added to my documentation, but I believe the advice given 
previously is mostly OK. On linux/unix at least, the continue / resume 
features look to be working well with all the v3.7, v3.8 and v3.8 (yuqk) 
versions I tested.

You can in fact skip using create_ini= / +gi if you are otherwise sure 
options are not changing. With v3.7 this means rendering with +c. In 
v3.8 versions it means rendering with +c and +cc (though +cc might not 
be the smart choice where per frame render times are short).

Bill P.

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