Apparently my brain kept working on the redirection problem that I blogged about yesterday as when I woke up the morning I had a good clue what the problem was: Long path names. That turned out to be at least big part of the problem. However, it was not quite that simple, it never is! I didn't have time to do a complete research into the problem and nail down everything, but here is my findings and theories.
It appears that the compiler has issues finding files if the path to them includes pathnames that are more than 8 characters long. For example:
C:\Dev\Prod\Utilities\Src
causes problems, but
C:\DEV\PROD\UTILIT~1\SRC
does not cause a problem. But like I said, that is just part of it, as:
C:\Dev\Prod\XPTheme\Src
also caused problem. Either the problem is that there were other paths in the *.INC
line that use long path names (and there were) OR the compiler didn't grasp somehow that
C:\DEV\PROD\XPTHEME\SRC
is a short path name! I'm not sure which it is and didn't have time to figure it out.
Using a macro for any part of the path fixes the problem completely. For example, I created this macro:
DEV=C:\Dev
and then used
%DEV%\Prod\Utilities\Src
and there was no problem at all. So using the macros somehow makes the IDE correctly interpret the path name and probably convert it to a short path and the compiler is happy. When I had cleaned everything up, I ended up with just two macros being defined in my C60EE.ini:
Prod=C:\Dev\Prod Dev=C:\Dev
I also came to a final consensus on the folder structures I'm using, which seems to be working pretty well so far. The Dev folder has 3 folders now:
| C:\Dev\Prod | Products. Each product has its own subfolder so it can be easily added to version control. This way the entire product folder can be checked out and committed. |
| C:\Dev\Projects | Non product projects. This folder contains client projects, in-house projects and anything that cannot be classified as a product, free or commercial. |
| C:\Dev\Source | Other sources. This is basically a catch all folder for anything that doesn't directly belong in either of the above. Currently it holds templates and classes that I use in some of my own apps, but are neither a product or a project on their own, nor do they belong to a specific product or project. |
With the structure in place I spent most of today copying and moving files from my old structure to the new one and test compiling various projects and products in both Clarion 6.3.9053 which I use for one client project, and Clarion 6.3.9058, which I use for pretty much everything else.
So tomorrow will be the day that I convert all my editor projects to work with the new folder structure as well as my Build Automator scripts. Then I will get this on to a virtual machine and test the structure with Subversion to make sure that it holds up for the version control!
Arnor Baldvinsson
