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.
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 Symbian 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.
Cleaning removes all the intermediate files created during compilation, and all the executables and import libraries created by the linker. The simplest invocation of this operation deletes the files for all platforms, and projects belonging to the component.
abld clean
It is also possible to specify the platform and build variant to be cleaned.
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 WINSCW platform specify:
abld build winscw udeb
or to build the release version for ARMV5 use:
abld build armv5 urel
See also