Where/how does RH update an .hhp file?

[Tech_Writer_KC]

We've been having a recurring problem where compiling the master .chm in our group of help files somehow overwrites the correct paths in the [MERGE FILES] section of the master's .hhp file with incorrect paths.

Since the paths point to a "Recovery" copy of our help file from an apparent crash (pre-dates me), my original assumption is that, somehow, either a crash or user-error has resulted in incorrect links being buried somewhere in the main project that causes this phenomenon. So far, I've been unable to track down a source.

After posting and reading similar topics, I found a solution in compiling the main, correcting the now wrong .hhp, and recompiling. It works, but why exactly the .hhp is overwritten the first time but not the second is beyond my level of comprehension (I assume some sort of change activity triggers RH's desire to overwrite, but I haven't found the culprit).

Regardless, can anyone tell me exactly what or where in RH this overwrite action is triggered? Or at least what action(s) cause RH to think the .hhp file needs to be overwritten? Given the nature of the link it's trying to point at, my assumption remains that this is somehow still related to the aforementioned crash, and that somehow an incorrect set of paths has been saved somewhere and, for whatever reason, RH thinks these are the right paths and overwrites what's in the existing .hhp file.

When I started here, we were on RH5, but have recently upgraded and moved our help files to RH7. I've also deleted the Recovery copy that the .hhp file gets re-pointed to. Neither has altered this behavior.

[Hippopodius]

Hi, KC.

Sorry, I don't have an answer but I observe that behavior too. I suspect that it has something to do with me a) renaming the projects and/or b) copying the projects onto a different disk. I did both.

Now my parent.hhp file has this [MERGE FILE] section:
[MERGE FILES]
!SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\client1.chm
!SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\client2.chm
!SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\client3.chm
D:\RoboHTML\Merged_Project\!SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\client3.chm
D:\RoboHTML\Merged_Project\!SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\client2.chm
D:\RoboHTML\Merged_Project\!SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\client1.chm
client1.chm
client2.chm
client3.chm
client1.chm
client2.chm
client3.chm


But, like you, sometimes it adds the extra listings and sometimes not. I haven't figured out what triggers the overwriting of or adding to my parent .hhp file. I've poked around to ... to try and find out how to get rid of that info so it won't add it. But no luck yet.

Thanks to anyone you can answer this!

[Amebr-ke0mH4]

I found a partial solution to the problem of completely incorrect files being included. If you are having problems with the path being hard coded, I have yet to find a solution, but suspect it is something to do with source control (MS Visual SourceSafe in our case).

Anyway, back to the incorrect files:
If you open the .xpj file, at the bottom of the file you may find a section starting with the tag [mergedhelpfiles]. You can delete all the incorrect chm files and subfolders here.

I'm not entirely sure if the section is necessary, because another "master" project doesn't have this section. When I have a free moment, I plan to create test projects with and without this section to see what the difference is.

Hope this helps at least partially.
Amber