Common Tasks

Below are instructions for performing common tasks in Daily Build

Creating a new group

1. Create a new task that you want to make into a group tasks.
2. Create another task after it, that you want to be a sub-task of your group.
3. Indent the second task. The first task will become a group task.
4. The group task can still execute programs, just like another task.

Creating a task to execute a DOS command, such as Copy or Mkdir

DOS commands are actually part of another program. One NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, these commands are part of cmd.exe. To execute a DOS command, it must be done via this program. Below is an example that will execute the dos command "copy from.txt to.txt"

1. Create a new task.
2. Set the Command to cmd.exe.
3. Set the Arguments to /c copy from.txt to.txt

Some commands will need the working folder setting to something appropriate. You should also take care to place filenames with spaces in them inside quotes.
eg /c copy "my long file name.txt" "a copy of my long file.txt"

Sending e-mail messages

Daily Build comes with a special tool that allows you to send e-mail messages from the command line, called SendEmail. This tool can send mail via SMTP or MS Exchange, making it possible to e-mail over the Internet or even over internal office networks. SendEmail is installed in the same location as Daily Build ("c:\program files\Daily Build" by default) and is a command line tool. sendemail -? will provide detailed instructions on all the command line options.

For example, to send a message via your ISP's SMTP mail server can could use the following command line...
sendemail -smtp mail.myisp.com -to friend@myisp.com -body "test message" -subject "testing..."

To send a file as an attachment...
sendemail -smtp mail.myisp.com -to friend@myisp.com -subject "Here is a file" -attach myfile.txt

Using this tool in Daily Build is similar to using other command line tools. Set the Command to sendemail.exe and set the Arguments to whatever you need to do.

Building MS Developer Studio projects

The following command line is need to build MS Developer Studio projects without creating a separate makefile.

msdev MyProgram.dsp /MAKE "MyProgram - Win32 Release" /REBUILD

Replace MyProgram.dsp with the project file for the program you want to build (don't forget the quotes if there are spaces in the path). You should also replace MyProgram - Win32 Release with the build configuration that you want to build. By default msdev creates a Release and Debug configuration.

Type msdev /? at the command prompt to get a list of all the command line arguments available to you.

Building Inno Setup installations

Inno Setup is a great free installation creator (Daily Builds installer was created with this tool) that you can find here. It is simple to control from Daily Build, as follows.

1. Locate your Inno Setup path ("c:\program files\Inno Setup 2" by default)
2. Create a new task
3. Set the command to c:\program files\Inno Setup 2\ISCC.exe (change the path to something appropriate to your installation).
4. Set the arguments to the full path to a setup script you have created with Inno Setup.