We are on the process of applying continuous integration to all our powerbuilder projects. One of the challenge is the classic orcascript sometimes failed in bootstrap pbls. e.g. customer exception. The interesting thing is, I can see the objects in the pbl by using yBrowser 10. but the object contains customer exception is missing from pbl when I try to look it in PowerBuilder IDE.
Anyway, PowerGen definately can save me out of this trouble. It’s slow comparing to orca because it’s checking all the depenanct when bootstrapping, but it’s stable.
Something I think PowerGen can improve in the future:
- Allow passing parameters into, so I can still use orca to build executable with version number. PowerGen implement this by using their version edit product to do the post build action.
- Work path should be dynamic, right now it’s hard-coded in gen file. I have to standardize it. I can change the *.gen file to replace those absolute path to relative one, but why couldn’t make the relative path be default? relative path is very necessary for branching.
Some other reasons for using orca besides PowerGen:
- to deploy EAServer component.
- orca import is very fast than synchronizing pbl from exported sr* file in PowerGen. This is a must-have feature to branch-merge in subversion, developers should be able to do this without PowerGen installed.
FrankMao.com 