Project Manager Build Tab

This tab on the Project Manager Dialog shows several options associated with building the application associated with the project. (Build an application with File | Build Project Exe, which builds a test version for use on your machine; or File | Build Project Distribution, which creates a directory of all files needed for the application, suitable for sending to another machine. See also build-project, which is a programmatic equivalent of the two menu commands. Be sure you are properly licensed before distributing an application to another machine.) Note the Help File widget, which has never been supported, has been removed in release 6.2.

The options are:

• Allow Debug of Build Error: if checked, the debugger will appear if an error occurs during a project build. If unchecked, no debugger will appear but the project build will fail.
• Splash Bitmap: the filename of a bitmap file which will be displayed while the application is starting up. See splash-file.
• Icon File: the filename of an icon file (typically a .ico file) to be used for the application icon. If none is supplied, the Allegro CL icon (a bust of Franz Liszt) will be used. See icon-file.
• Display Allegro CL Icon in System Tray (to access debugging console): if this option is checked (as it is by default), then Allegro CL's Franz Liszt icon (a blue head) will appear in the Windows tray when the standalone application that is generated from this project is run. The icon may be double-clicked to access the debugging console. (Right-clicking the icon presents a menu of other choices, just as in the IDE.) Note that it may not be apparent that an error has occurred in a standalone application until you display the console and check for a break there, and a problem may occur in a standalone application even if it did not occur when running the project in the IDE.

  If this option is unchecked, then the Franz Liszt icon will not appear in the Windows tray for the standalone application. Further, if an unhandled error occurs in the standalone application, then a dialog will appear noting that an error has occurred and that the application will exit. Exiting on an unhandled error avoids leaving the application in an unpredictable state where events are still handled though the application is in the middle of an operation that errored. Unchecking this option adds the symbol :suppress-systray-icon to the build-flags of the project.

  We recommend leaving this option checked for debugging purposes until shortly before delivering an application, and then turning the option off for delivery, to shield the end user from the debugging console and tray icon as well as from the possibility of continuing to use the application after an unhandled error. To make a Common Graphics application handle errors more cleanly, an application should add its own signal handlers (such as calls to handler-bind) around code that could possibly signal an error.

  Note that it is the Franz Liszt icon that is displayed. The application icon specified by the Icon File option is not used in the system tray.

• Full Recompile for Runtime Conditionalizations in Project Code. This option is needed only if the project source code contains #-runtime-system or #+runtime-system reader conditionalizations to make the project behave somewhat differently when it is run as a standalone application that when it is run in the IDE. See full-recompile-for-runtime-conditionalizations. If checked, all project code will be recompiled with :runtime-system included on the *features* list before a project distribution is produced, as described on the full-recompile-for-runtime-conditionalizations page.
• Runtime Option (to generate-application): generate-application must be called with a value specified for the runtime argument. The choices are :standard, :dynamic, and :partners (and these are the three values for this option). You must be licensed for whatever choice you make. See runtime.htm for details.

See the general description of the Project Manager Dialog for details of the toolbar buttons.

Copyright (c) 1998-2002, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
Documentation for Allegro CL version 6.2. This page has had minimal revisions compared to the 6.1 page.
Created 2002.2.26.