Forward unknown long-form CLI flags to Electron while preserving app argument semantics

[Copilot]

Minsky currently consumes process.argv itself, which caused unknown flags to be ignored by Electron/Chromium. This change routes unknown --... switches to Electron and keeps existing Minsky-specific argument behavior intact.

• CLI parsing behavior

  • Continue handling --version internally.
  • Forward unknown long-form switches (--foo, --foo=bar) to app.commandLine.appendSwitch(...).
  • Preserve -- as an explicit end-of-options delimiter; subsequent args are treated as positional inputs.

• Positional argument handling

  • Parse only user-supplied arguments (exclude runtime/executable entries) before startup logic.
  • Keep positional model-file loading behavior, now based on explicit positional collection.

• Safety/compatibility constraints

  • Do not forward single-dash arguments (-x) to avoid changing meaning of short-form or platform-injected args.

if (arg.startsWith('--')) {
  const flag = arg.replace(/^-+/, '');
  const splitAt = flag.indexOf('=');
  if (splitAt >= 0)
    app.commandLine.appendSwitch(flag.slice(0, splitAt), flag.slice(splitAt + 1));
  else
    app.commandLine.appendSwitch(flag);
} else if (arg[0] !== '-') {
  App.cliArguments.push(arg);
}

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This change is 

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[highperformancecoder]

@coderabbitai review

[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟢 Approval recommended

The focused changes correctly implement the documented CLI semantics without unresolved issues.

Review effort: Balanced
Findings: None

What changed in this PR

Updates Electron startup argument parsing while preserving Minsky’s positional model loading.

Changes:

• Handles --version internally and forwards unknown long-form switches.
• Honors -- and ignores single-dash options.
• Collects positional arguments without executable entries.

File	Description
gui-js/​apps/​minsky-electron/​src/​app/​app.ts	Refines CLI parsing and model-file selection.

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