Maximizing Your Results with SoftBench

Understanding Projects

Project build lets SoftBench manage your build instructions. You can specify source-to-target dependencies and build order dependencies, choose convenient system or customized build configurations and build packages, and automatically generate Makefiles or do without Makefiles altogether if you prefer.

•SoftBench provides an external build model as an alternative to project build for people who already have a highly-tuned build environment. With external build, you edit and maintain the Makefile or build script. SoftBench provides an "External Build Command" dialog box for you to initiate your builds.

External build lets you use your own make utilities, such as imake, make, or nmake files or scripts. External build is the opposite of project build, where SoftBench handles building without the need for a Makefile. SoftBench does not read or parse your Makefile. By using external build you lose some of the conveniences that project build provides, such as access to the target graph and automatic generation of a Makefile. You can also add secondary source locations to SoftBench's search lists through alternate source roots.

The "External Build Command" dialog box can be utilized during project build to build software which is not in a project, or to execute a shell command and view the output in the output browser.

Recommendation: Use project build for your projects whenever possible. You may choose to use external build and maintain the make process yourself when:

•You have one source that becomes many types of objects.

•Your process cannot use file suffixes to tell what file types are in use.

•Your build process uses the VPATH environment variable for make(1).

•You have a working build process and are perfectly happy with it.

26

Chapter 1