Maximizing Your Results with SoftBench

Understanding Projects

configurations provided by SoftBench.

Build configurations are independent of projects and targets. SoftBench ships with a basic set of build configurations. You can create new user build configurations based on the shipped build configurations, adding build instructions that are unique to your environment. To have your administrator save these as shared customizations available to other users, see "Sharing Build Configurations with Your Team" in SoftBench Online Help.

Once you decide on build configurations (system or customized) that work for your environment, you can use the same build configuration for many targets, and you can further customize a build configuration for a specific target.

A build package is a collection of build instructions that makes it easy to use third-party libraries, utilities, or compiler directives in many build configurations. Packages also make it easy to specify the compiler to use for the target. Packages are similar to build configurations because they include library and include directories, compiler options, defines, and other information needed for using the library or utility. First, choose a system or customized package; then include the package in all appropriate build configurations. If the package's build instructions need to change, you modify the package, and all build configurations which use the package update automatically.

For example, SoftBench provides packages for Motif, X11R6, SoftBench Encapsulator, RogueWave, and Oracle. If the requirements for building the library change, you can modify customized packages. All build configurations that include the package automatically update to use the modified package.

A transform is a set of operations that run a program or shell utility that converts a file from one form to another. For example, the C compiler transforms a source file into an object file. SQL preprocessors transform a source file with embedded SQL into a generated source file with all the SQL statements expanded. The gencat utility transforms a file of message strings into a message catalog. For more information about these concepts, refer to the "SoftBench Key Concepts" topics on "Build Configurations", "Build Packages", and "Transforms" available through "Help: Overview".

Transforms are the building blocks of build packages and build configurations. A build package contains zero or more transforms plus modifiers that influence how transforms operate. An example of a

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Chapter 1