Why do files drop out of WebHelp builds when they exist in the original project?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
July 29, 2013
1 reply
4194 views

I am using RH 10 (upgraded early June 2013), Windows 7 and we support IE 9, Chrome, and Firefox.

I build my WebHelp to a WebHelpGenerated folder before checking it into CVS for my development to pull and place in our product.

My project has 1200 files.

I update a topic, save, generate, and lately the build has missing topic pages.

They display in the TOC, but the file is missing altogether and when I check the output View in RH10, it is missing there too, but the file is in the existing project folder. Somewhere along the way, the build is not picking up miscellaneous files.

In 2 of 3 cases, in my project folder, I had the original file and what I assume is some kind of duplicate file, that had a tilde symbol, for example, instructions~.htm. I didn't have permissions to do anything with this file, but after a reboot, I could delete the file, rebuild the Help and everything would be fine. In one case, I didn't have the odd file, but couldn't get the missing file in the build until a reboot.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

WebHelp

This topic has been closed for replies.

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi there

Files don't typically just "fall out" of a build. Are you certain that you aren't using some sort of build expression along with Conditional Build Tags that is causing this to happen?

Cheers... Rick

S

shhimwritingAuthor

Known Participant

Perhaps "fall out" was the wrong way to describe, but random files are not getting built so when you try to open the topic, you get a "page not found" error, since the htm is missing from the output file.

To answer you question, no, I don't use build tags.

Thanks

R

RuWriter

Participating Frequently

Correct me if I am wrong but it seems the workflow is you all check stuff out and you all generate to the E drive. Surely the procedure should be that you all check out as required and then check back in, then elect one of you to PUBLISH to the E drive.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Amber - thanks for the suggestion. This might be something to look into. It looks like there is a way to exclude certain files/folders/processes from being scanned by our anti-virus software, so it may help to do that for our RH work. My supervisor is out of the office today, so I'll have to discuss this with her tomorrow. So far, rebooting before we build (using our regular procedure) is fixing the problem, so we think the issue is related to something about our operating system, in which case antivirus software could be the culprit.

Peter - Two out of three of us generate because there are two completely separate projects. Each project has a lead author, so shhimwriting is the only one who generates her main project, and I am the only one who generates my main project, even though we may have multiple people working in them at times. All of us can potentially "check in" project files (as a backup and means for us to get the latest someone else has worked on), but only two of us "check in" built files for the two separate projects (so development can pull them into the products when they build the software). And again, as far as our structure, we use E for all project and generated files so no matter who is working, the embedded file paths that point to topics, images, etc. match (to ensure that links always know where to pull something from); then, we check in to CVS using C because CVS options are only available from the local hard drive. Sorry if this still isn't clear, but development doesn't "need" the published version to be on E. They only set up our structure that way so that the RH project would always know where to look for and find files. To get the files to development, we check in files from the C drive, and development pulls it from CVS, not from any location on our local machines (C) or company network (E).

Thanks,

RuWriter

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded