The RCB interface asks a series of questions to gather the information needed to create the buildspec. These questions fall into two groups:

This section provides some general information about working with the questions used to create a buildspec.

The question list, located on the left side of the build options screen, lets you see which options you have or have not specified. “Specify Build Options” shows the question list.

RCB begins with information about Rogue Wave components, stored in an XML-based repository. This information allows RCB to tailor questions to a particular situation. General questions provide the basic information about what, where, and how the SourcePro C++ component will be built. Module-specific questions are only asked if you select a component that needs additional information. By default, advanced questions are not displayed; RCB selects an appropriate default answer.

For questions with answers to select in a drop-down menu, only valid answers are selectable. The non-valid answers are greyed out. This can be changed, but is not recommended (see “Unavailable (Greyed-out) Answers”).

RCB can automatically answer some buildspec questions by examining the answers given for previous questions. This is known as Context-Sensitive Q&A, or answer-forcing.

If RCB determines that a question has only one possible answer, or that a particular question is not applicable based on previous answers, it automatically answers or bypasses that question.

For example, if you select one of the Solaris platforms on the operating system selection screen, RCB later gives you the option of using either the default Solaris native standard library, or its STLPort implementation; for all other platforms, the default native standard library is assumed and the standard library option screen does not appear.