Windows CE: Development tools considerations part VI

Hi all,

today I want to discuss the last but not least question of our series.

Question:
What if I have set up my system to use script files instead of the PlatformBuilder IDE? What do I need to do in order to use the IDE?

Answer:
We learned previously that we can set up an automated build outside of the PlatformBuilder IDE. Therefore we need pbxmlutils.exe and a .pbxml file. Now if you are starting a new project it is quite simple to create a .pbxml file we simply need to create a new OSDesign project.
But how can we accomplish the task of creating a .pbxml file if we have a lot of script files that set up our build environment? Well we need to correlate the variables set in the script files to variables set via the catalog in the PlatformBuilder IDE. If necessary we even need to create new catalog items but this is easy to do from within the IDE. Some variables might not be set in the catalog but instead in some platform internal .bat files. Unfortunately it can be quite challenging to map all the variables from our scripts to the IDE but it is definitely doable and in the end worth the effort as the system will be a lot more usable in the end.
Once we have created our .pbxml file, all that is left to do is open an existing project in the PlatformBuilder IDE with our just created .pbxml file to create our .sln file and we are ready to use the IDE from now on!

This concludes our little series; hopefully I could shed some light on some important issues…

Have fun!