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Application Programming: Creating IDL Projects |
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IDL Project allows you to easily develop applications in IDL for distribution among other developers, colleagues, or users who have IDL. If you want to develop applications for users who do not have IDL previously installed on their computers, contact your ITT Visual Information Solutions sales representatives for more information on how you can distribute an IDL Runtime version.
Working with an IDL Project allows you to easily prepare a SAVE file of your IDL application for distribution. You can organize, manage, compile, run, and create distributions of all of your application files from within the IDL Project interface. An IDL Project simplifies the process of preparing your application for distribution by offering a visual interface to application files and by automatically creating the script necessary for distributing a Runtime version of IDL. Whether you have existing files that you want to package as an application or you are building an application from the ground up, IDL Project offers the flexibility and functionality you need in a development environment.
An IDL Project has an easy to use visual interface that allows clear organization to all of the required files you need for your IDL application. This includes source files, data files, image files, or any other files your application will need to run. By default, an IDL Project contains the following categories for your files:
You can also create your own folders or rename existing folders to customize your IDL Project.
An IDL Project makes it easy to add, remove, move, edit, compile, and run your application. Additionally, the project saves all of your workspace information including breakpoints set in source code. Since breakpoints are saved when you save your project, this alleviates the need to reset them every time you open a source code file in your project. If you save and exit your project with open files, those same files will be automatically opened when you re-open the project.
You can easily access files in your project by simply double-clicking on them. Source (.pro) files are opened in the IDL Editor and .prc (IDL GUIBuilder) files are opened in the IDL GUIBuilder. By holding down CTRL and left-clicking or by holding down SHIFT and left-clicking, you can select multiple files in the IDL Project window. You can then edit, move, compile, delete, or set the properties of multiple files at one time.
Compiling and running applications is fast and easy. Through the Project menu, you can compile all of your source files or just the files that you have modified before running your application.
This feature allows you to quickly test your application. Building your application creates an IDL .sav file that contains all of the programs in your application. If you have .prc (IDL GUIBuilder) files in your project, they will also be compiled and the generated source (.pro) and the event (*_eventcb.pro) files will be automatically added to your IDL Project.
Once you have completed your application, you can quickly and easily create a distribution for your application so that you can distribute it to colleagues or customers. There are options for exporting either compiled code or source code. All your source code or compiled code (.sav files), IDL GUIBuilder files, data files, and image files are copied to a directory you specify.
You can also create an IDL Runtime distribution to include with your application. If you are interested in sharing your application with users who do not have IDL, please contact your ITT Visual Information Solutions sales representative to discuss the options available to you.
The IDL Project window displays the contents of your current project and allows you to manipulate your project.
| Note If you are not using your IDL Project, you can hide the IDL Project window by selecting File  Preferences and then clicking the Layout tab. Under the Show Windows section, deselect the Project checkbox. When you open or create an IDL Project, the Project window will automatically be displayed and this preference will be reset to selected. |
If you click the plus sign to expand your project, you will see the groups in your project. If you click the plus sign on a folder, you will see the individual files that are grouped in that folder.
If you have added a file to a project and then either removed or renamed it on your system, your IDL Project will display an icon with a red X through it to denote that it can no longer be found. For information on how to change the path of a missing file, see Setting the Properties of a File.
The IDL Project toolbar offers shortcuts to frequently used menu items. When you have a project open, the toolbar is available to help you manage your project's properties.
A working example of a project, demo_proj.prj, has been included in the examples directory.
IDL Online Help (March 06, 2007)
