The Step Properties dialog is used to add new steps to a project or modify existing steps. For new steps, it is accessed by double-clicking an action on the Actions pane or by choosing Insert on the Edit menu.  For an existing step, it is accessed from the Properties button on the toolbar, the Properties item on the View menu.  Multiple steps can be selected and edited simultaneously.  If all steps have the same action, all the property tabs will be displayed, otherwise only the General tab will be available.  All properties that are modified will be updated in all selected steps (the initial dialog will show the properties of the first selected step).

 

 

The step action is displayed in the dialog caption.  Each step contains a General tab for standard properties and may contain additional tabs specific to the action for that step.

 

Fields on the General Tab

 

Name: Used to identify the step when building (required).

 

Description: A description of the step (optional).  It will also be displayed in a tool tip in the main window when the mouse is over the Step Name column.

 

Conditional Build Rule

 

This section is used to define a build rule that determines if a step and its children will be built or skipped.  This is a powerful capability that allows selective execution of project steps based on the value of macros, script, or environment variables.

 

On Step Failure

 

This section of the dialog can be used to configure the action(s) to perform if the step fails to build.

 

 

Disable logging of action output: If checked, any logging the step's action performs (to a file or the Output pane) will be ignored and not logged. 

 

Notes:

 

Terminate action if not completed after x seconds: If a non-zero value is specified and the action has not completed within that number of seconds, the build component will attempt to terminate the action.  The build status of the step will be Failed. 

 

Note: Termination of an action will succeed only if the action periodically checks or waits on the CancelEvent property (this is automatic for the built-in actions and user actions that call RunProgramEx).

 

Buttons on the Dialog

 

Note: Bracket characters [ and ] and the percent sign character % within step fields have special meaning in a step field.