automating parents and children

[Tech_Writer_KC]

We are looking to place our Help system in a new source control system (Team Foundation Server, e.g. "TFS") and have it auto-built on the Build Machine, probably on a weekly basis rather than daily.

Our help system consists of one "parent" CHM and a number of "child" CHMs. We have previous experience automating a small, single CHM help file using StarTeam, but no experience in how to automate a parent/child setup.

My working assumption of how this will work is we create a FinalBuilder command line for each help project, and that our parent CHM should be built last.

Am I being too simplistic? Is there anything we need to keep in mind or look out for?

Thanks!

[Tech_Writer_KC]

And, as usual, I forget the basics! :)

We're using RH7, with separate copies installed on my machine (for editing changes in our Help) and on the build machine (this is the copy that will be used to check out, compile, and check in our Help on the build machine).

We're using Team Foundation Server as our source control, and Final Builder is the software used on our build machine.

[MergeThis]

Have you looked into the batch file option in a command-line build? You can build multiple projects, multiple layouts, and multiple outputs; just enter one line for each.

In the example below, note that double quotes are used to encase any strings with spaces. Note also the relative location of our WebHelp merged folders in relation to the .bat file, and then the -l key for the layout and -o for the output. See the RH 7 Help for more details. Also make sure there are no line breaks for each build (in Notepad, turning off Word Wrap should show that - if not, remove them).


Good luck,
Leon

[Tech_Writer_KC]

We use the default names for our layouts, so using one of your examples, would it be:

c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp 7\RoboHTML\RHCL.exe" realtime\realtime.xpj -l "Microsoft HTML Help (Primary Layout)" -o c:v9_pdf_output\realtime

Is that correct?

[MergeThis]

Absalootle!

[Casper_Lange]

One thing is a shame though. If you work with RSC (version control) you cannot GET the latest version through a commandline option. So you always have to get the latest version manually and then you can build automatically...