Log File for Build Process?

[Jared Hess]

Is there a log file that gets written to while a project is getting built to a particular target? I'm testing my X5 project inside RH 6 Trial Version, and it's crashing about midway through the Updating Files step of building a HTML Help (CHM) file.

The sample projects that come with RH 6 compile fine, so I'm guessing there's a problem with my project it doesn't like; I'm trying to track down what exactly.

A log file would be much faster than my current approach which is to mark folders as Print only until it builds without error, then slowly removing the Print only conditional and rebuilding to find the problem...

I know a log is created during the build process in the Output tab inside RH, but when the app crashes I can't get to it to view it. Is this information stored externally somewhere?

[Peter Grainge]

Could you be hitting the 25 topic limit with the trial version?

[Jared Hess]

I don't think that's the problem. I don't think there is a 25 topic limit. This is a very LARGE project (over 3000 topics). Due to the crash, I have set about 1/2 the topics to print only and have have slowly been removing the print only condition to find the problem topic. Right now it's bulding fine with well over probably a 1000 topics...

I just need a way to find problem topic(s). A log file would be useful...

[Peter Grainge]

I don't believe there is such a file within RH but stand to be corrected on that. However I have always been advised there is a limit and yesterday someone was having problems until they reduced their trial project to 25 topics.

You say it is building so post back when it completes.

When it crashes, are you using a build expression?

[Jared Hess]

What I mean by "building fine" is that the trial version has built fine with well over 1000 topics--repeatedly. I've been removing the print only condition one chapter (ie folder) at a time and then rebuilding without errors, trying to locate the topic or file that's causing the problem.

If there is no log file, is there at least a faster way to exclude and include files in a particular build?

Yes, I'm using conditional build expressions.

[Peter Grainge]

There is a problem with build expressions and tables with merged cells. See Snippet 69 on my site.

See if that could be an issue here?

[HKabaker]

Look in the WebHelp output folder in !SSL!. You should see the files that were generated before the crash. Try to figure out how RH is ordering them.

If you open the CPD file with MS Access, I think the topic list table is ordered by when they first entered the project, and (speculating here) RH probably follows that order when generating WebHelp. Compare the topic list table with the WebHelp directory in !SSL!.

I haven't proven this yet. Please post back on results.

Harvey

[Jared Hess · Accepted solution]

I looked in the temporary output folder inside the appropriate subdirectory in !SSL! but it looks like all the files are there. In any case, I'm fairly certain I'm experiencing the same problem Peter mentioned in his post about the conditional build tags and merged tables. I did a build without any conditional build tags and things worked fine. With conditional build tags I still get the crash.

Conditional Build Tags and Merged Table Cells Bug