Support Statement: Custom Build Order

Owned by Mark Juras
Last updated: Jan 27, 2022

Question

We’d like to influence the ordering a bit to create various "migration sets" for the project.

Is it possible to find somehow the “shortest” build order for a target project (or small set of target projects).

We would like that for certain important projects, only its true dependencies appear before those “target” projects in the build order.

Answer

Computing the build order for a set of VBPs depends on the initial order of VBPs in the *.gmproj file.

You may order the VBPs manually using a text editor, or more easily using Excel (or other tab-delimited data editor).  To use Excel, choose \[File/Edit] from the Main Menu, reorder the rows in Excel, save your changes, then return to gmStudio and click File/Load on the Main Menu.
 

If you have a manually ordered gmProj, you should avoid re-running the build order tool as it will set the order reorder the tasks according to their inter-dependencies.  

You may use the settings form to make a project specific version of the build order template (rpt.vbp_ord.xml) and modify it to not generate the report; for example, commenting out the <BuildOrder/> command.

You may also put an alternate order in the UsrCmnt or UsrDesc field so that you can filter and re-sort things if you need to.  

The Iceberg Report will tell you the set of VBP inter-dependencies relating for given VBP.

The VBP build order analysis and reporting process is implemented in a gmSL script, utility.gmsl, distributed with the tool.