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Jared Hess
Jared Hess
Legend
August 12, 2009
Question

Building a RH .CHM File on a Server?

  • August 12, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 1041 views

Hi everyone. Since our company has switched to Mercurial for their source control system they want me to expose my .htm files to the source control system and then have the server build the .chm file along with the rest of the code. What do we need to do to make this happen so that all the RoboHelp-specific stuff compiles as it should (browse sequences, glossary of terms tab etc)? Do we need a new copy of RoboHelp that just runs on the server? I'm not sure how to accomplish this. If anyone else is doing something similar and could share their wisdom I would appreciate it.

Regards,

Jared Hess

Latest RH 7

HTML Help output

Vista 32bit OS

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1 reply

MergeThis
MergeThis
Inspiring
August 12, 2009

Somehow, you need to disabuse them of this "build the doc as part of the product" mentality. It'll be difficult, I know...we've been through it here.

The inescapable fact remains: changes in the help system have absolutely no influence on the product, and therefore the output only needs to be inserted, not built, by release engineering. We copy our WebHelp output to a staging area from which our release engineering draws the help for this purpose. In addition, RoboHelp must be run on a local machine, not a server.

You can certainly manage your source files thru source control, but that's as far as I'd go. (Our developers use Perforce, but we're using RoboSource Control 3.1, with RH 8.)

Good luck,

Leon

Jared Hess
Jared HessAuthor
Legend
August 12, 2009

Thanks Leon.

I agree with your sentiments. But management being what it is... they want things to fit into this nice "agile" box and have everything synched up with the product in a releasable state on a daily basis.

Anyway, you wrote "In addition, RoboHelp must be run on a local machine, not a server."

Does this mean it cannot run on a server (meaning it won't function)?

Or it should not (due to licensing restrictions)?

We would be getting willing to get another license of RH to do this if need be and we wouldn't be using it for any other purpose other than to compile our projects.

MergeThis
MergeThis
Inspiring
August 12, 2009

Both.

The project (source, not output) will run poorly, if at all, on a server.

The licensing is also an issue.

In addition, command-line builds, AFAIK, can only be done if an identical layout has already been established, and only on the same machine. Whether that's an RH 8 bug, or a misunderstanding of the function on our part, I'm not sure. Keep up the good fight. As to "a releasable state on a daily basis," that's what we do. Our manager, twice daily, runs a script that generates a .war file from our output, copies it to a release engineering staging area, and everybody's happy.

Good luck,

Leon

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