Why is the merge parent creating folders for and publishing all the contents of the child projects?

[Tatu_Mbili]

Hello again,

I'm using RH10 under TFS. Previously when I published my merged project, parent and two child projects, once I published the parent, the published file structure was Parent/mergedProjects/Child 1 and Parent/mergedProjects/Child 2 (note the spaces: my xpj files are called Child 1.xpj and Child 2.xpj). I have been berated for having fragile links (my only excuse is I'm completely self taught with anything web and RH based) and am trying to get rid of the spaces, so I changed the publish path in the two child projects to not have any spaces, thought that would do it. I do what I've learned here (thanks, Peter!) and publish my parent, then each of the child projects. The problem is that the parent is publishing both child projects at the same time  and publishing an old version of the project without my latest changes, with the wrong folder names. I'm very frustrated. I think it has to do with the fact that my .xpj files have spaces in them and that's where it's taking the folder names from when I define the two child projects in the parent TOC. If, during that process, I pick the Child 1.xpj file and then where it says Project Name, I enter Child1, it then creates three folders under mergedProject: Child 1, Child 2 and Child1.

Why is the parent publishing all this old stuff? As far as I know, it should only be publishing itself and setting up the mergedProject folder so that I can publish the child projects which then create their own folders during the publish, if they don't exist before.

If it is the .xpj that is used as the name of the mergedProject child folder, can I rename that file so there are no spaces in it? Project is under TFS version control and the documentation here says I can't if it is under version control. Again, if that's the issue, can I just remove it from version control and then rename the project in order to change the .xpj file name?

Thanks.

Helen

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

On creating merged help, the master project will create empty folders for all children in the folder mergedProjects. Having those three empty folders is what I'd expect. From your child project you generate to the Child 1 and Child 2 folder. For every child project you take to the output, RoboHelp creates a folder. Why it needs it? Probably there is some script checking that folder, but I'm not sure.

As to why you have two Child 1 and Child1 folder, in your main TOC, you probably still have a placeholder for the Child1.

Kind regards,

Willam

[Tatu_Mbili]

Thanks for the reply, Willam. I'm not sure I was very clear. What I was expecting is exactly what you describe, that two empty folders will be created, one for each child (I only have two). The problem is that that is not what is happening: when I generate and publish the parent to a completely clean location, i.e., delete all previous content from the publish location, the child folders are placed under mergedProjects but they are full! They contain the child projects, which are published at the same time, and from what I know, this is not supposed to happen, they are supposed to be blank, until I publish the two child projects there.

Once I know why this is happening, I'll come back and address the second part of my problem above.

Thanks.

Helen

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Does this also happen if you remove the !SSL! folder? It seems that somehow an old output is retained even though it should be removed.

Kind regards,

Willam

[Tatu_Mbili]

Where am I supposed to remove the SSL folder from? My project is under version control through TFS: am I removing this from the file structure before publish? In the parent? In the child ones?

My local copy of the parent has an SSL folder which contains an empty WebHelp folder only. The corresponding folder on the TFS server contains no SSL folder.

My local copy of Child 1 has an SSL folder with a bunch of folders in it, some of them very old publishes, some very recent. The corresponding location on the TFS server has no SSL folder at all.

My local copy of Child 2 has two empty folders in SSL. The corresponding location on the TFS server has no SSL folder at all.

Is it these local copies I should be deleting using Win Explorer?

I'm trying to be really careful here as I really don't want to mess up what was a project that was working really well.

Thanks,

Helen

[Willam_van_Weelden]

You can remove the SSL from your local copies. The main thing is that there should not be an SSL folder in TFS. You can always zip up the project folder before deleting as to never lose anything.

Also, what is the directory you are generating to? Can you clear that directory completely and try again?

Kind regards,

Willam