I finally worked up the courage to try to add scripted building to my project again. I originally wanted to use the command line tools, but that didn’t work. So I decided this time to try the IDE.
To make a long story short, the command line does not work as documented. Although it can be run from the command line directly and work about 75% of the time (without any indication why it is failing the other 20%), this drops to maybe 20% of a time once it is put in a makefile (and I tried both Borland’s make and Cygwin’s make). The failure varies; sometimes it opens the project but won’t build it, sometimes it doesn’t even open the project.
In short, it is useless as a way of scripted builds. So it seems there is no way to do scripted builds with CodeWarrior Palm 9.
I’ve actually been working on this off and on for about a week. What prevented me from posting until now is that it almost works. For instance, I’ll change my makefile to use cmdide instead of ide (even though cmdide is only supposed to be for Windows 95/98/ME) and it will work for a while. Then it will suddenly stop. But if I change it back to ide, it may work again a few times. Then it’s back to cmdide. So I switch makefile runners and it starts to work again… for a while. All with the same parameters.
Something that is not reliable is not useful.
Update, 10:36 AM: After posting this, I came up with a makefile that worked. I tested it about 15 times before deciding it was for real. I checked it in to source control and ran it again. I was so happy I called my wife over and showed her it. She thought all the flashing windows were cool. She left, and I ran it again to bask in the glory of it. It stopped working. This is so very frustrating.
August 13th, 2005 at 4:46 am
Just to note, when I was at Metrowerks, we used scripted IDE builds all the time for our automation. However, I think we actually had a VBSCript driver that used the COM API to call the IDE and collect errors… the code in the scripts folder is an early version of some of that work.
August 13th, 2005 at 8:28 am
Well, I think we have a MSDN subscription at work, so I might give that a try. I’ve read a couple good comments for the COM API. Thanks, Ben.