abld, bldmake, makmake

What are abld, bldmake and makmake and how to use them?

All the definitions are from Symbian SDK documentations.

ABLD

The abld.bat batch file is used to control all aspects of building a project. It is created in the current directory by the bldmake tool from a component
description file.bld.inf.

abld builds projects based on the makefiles created by bldmake from the component information file and project files.
The simplest invocation of this command builds the project for all possible build variants:

> abld build

However building for a platform can take some time, and it is usual to only specify the platform required. For example, to build the debug version on
the wins platform specify:

> abld build wins udeb

The syntax reference for this tool exhaustively lists all of the possible build operations which can be performed using abld. The tool.s flexibility
obscures the fact that most developers will only need to use two commands.one for cleaning up all files created in a previous build, and
another for building the current project.

BLDMAKE

The bldmake tool processes the component description file (bld.inf) in the current directory and generates the batch file abld.bat and several build
batch makefiles (.make). abld can then use the makefiles to carry out the various stages of building the component.

The tool supports a number of command line options, however most developers will simply use:

> bldmake bldfiles

bldmake then carries out the following 3-stage process:

Creates the directory: \epoc32\build\absolute_path_to_bld.inf_file\

Generates makefiles for the component into this directory

Produces a batch file called abld.bat in the current directory.

MAKMAKE

Symbian projects are defined by an .mmp file which specifies the essential elements of the project. The makmake tool then uses this environment-neutral
file to build makefiles for use in various environments. These makefiles are then used for project development.
Some makefiles are built for use in building the project from the command-line, while others are for use with the MSVC++ IDE. Command-line makefiles
created by makmake contain syntax which it is not possible to incorporate into makefiles intended for the MSVC IDE.

Following example shows how to make visual c++ 6.0 project file out of file named myapplication.mmp. Other options can be found in documentation.

> makmake myapplication vc6