Build server license?

[erickarjala]

Hello,

We are looking to install a copy of RoboHelp on our build server. Does this require a separate license? If so, is there a command line build component available for build servers that costs less than a full license? (We do not need authoring capabilities on our build server). Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

This is really a question for Adobe. To the best of my knowledge it does require a licence but don't forget your Rh licence allows installation on two machines. That is not intended for two author use but to allow, for example, an author to work at home or in the office.

You would need to check with Adobe that use is permitted.

Hopefully someone who has experience of this scenario can chip in.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Provolow]

I have the same question! We would also like our build server to use RoboHelp's command-line interface to automatically generate the latest help files (without authoring capability). Interested to know if you've heard a definitive answer from Adobe.

Thanks.

[johndaigle]

Hi Provolow and erickarjala

I don't know the answer offhand. Peter's suggestion is the only one that comes to mind (activation on two machines being allowable.)

Since Peter is sleeping in his part of the world right now, let me ask a few questions.

I will query Adobe to see if they can clarify but before I do, where does the actual RoboHelp project reside (on the author's machine? Source Control? Share Drive?)

What is the exact workflow you would prefer? Is the idea that the author will "hand off" the project to web admin for copying to the server machine and then you want to run rhcl.exe from there?

Thanks and we'll see if we can clarify.

John Daigle

Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

Evergreen, Colorado

www.showmethedemo.com

[Provolow]

Thanks for looking into this, John!  In our case, we have a software build server (CruiseControl) that automatically watches source control and rebuilds the appropriate software product whenever changes to source code are checked in.  We would like to configure it to do the same with help files -- watch source control for changes to the help file sources, and when it detects anything, kick off rhcl.exe to rebuild a CHM file or WebHelp.

Then the rebuilt CHM or WebHelp could be automatically deployed as well, whatever makes sense for that project.

[erickarjala]

John, thanks a lot for your help. Our situation seems identical Provolow -- the project resides on the author's machine, which is checked into source control. We want the build server to generate a CHM/WebHelp output when a new source is checked in.

[Vikas_Singla]

Hi erickarjala and Provolow

As per the workflow you had mentioned, RoboHelp Scripting Engine would serve the purpose.You can write a script for watching the version control information. e.g. fetching the status of a specific file in RoboHelp Project.

You can explore "RoboHelp.Project" object in scripting, which is current project object. You can use this object to retrieve file status of files in the project (e.g.curProject.FileManager.item(index) ).

Depending upon the file status, you can use scripting to publish the desired outputs (e.g. WebHelp/ CHM).

Scripting guide can be found on this link: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/scripting/robohelp_10_scripting.p df

Hopefully this would help.

Thanks,

Vikas Singla

RoboHelp Team

[susan_colm]

Can someone from RoboHelp please answer the original question -- whether we can install RoboHelp on our build server and build the help from there?

[susan_colm]

Or is this the answer to the original question - to use this scripting? Tx!

[Peter Grainge]

There are two aspects to this question, licensing and operating system.

Item 48 in Snippets​ on my site will link you to the operating systems that RoboHelp supports.

Licensing is already covered in my earlier response.

I am not able to advise you on how scripting would work but Vikas Singla is Adobe staff. I think if you want more than what is covered here, you will have to go to Adobe Customer Support, the official support channel.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Mike Farrington]

Has anything new come of this in all these years?  Is RoboHelp 2019 any better at this?

We're using RoboHelp 2015 at the moment, and our Build Server has to eat a license just to build the help file.  This makes it so that the help author can only use the software on his desktop PC and not his laptop as well.

But more frustratingly, we have many build servers (6 in total at the moment).  Also, we'd like to dynamically allocate more from a base virtual machine image to meet demand).  But of all our software compilation projects, RoboHelp is the only one where both the IDE and the compiler require a license.

Adobe, please take a cue from Microsoft here and get rid of licensing requirements for RHCL.EXE.  Keep your license restrictions to the IDE, and let the compiler do it's work without a required license.

Currently, our help builds must all happen on a specific build server agent machine, which means it sometimes has to wait a round for 20+ minutes just to do a 30 second help file compilation.

Let the command-line compiler (RHCL.EXE) be free.  Just license the IDE (robohelp.exe).

You can't really tout this as a collaboration tool if you can't incorporate help files into a Continuoius Integration / Continuous Delivery pipeline.

[Peter Grainge]

Only Adobe can give you an answer to this and I have brought it to their notice.

Meantime I can only suggest that you deactivate on the laptop and activate on the server as required.

Sorry for the slow answer. For some reason being investigated your post went to spam. I suspect it is because it was added to an old thread which is a method used by spammers. However, there was no link which there would be if it was from a spammer.

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