Developing on Two Machines

This page provides a guide to required filenames and locations, with tips for people using two machines for development and testing.

Note that HREF has designed the license agreement so that this is perfectly legal for you to do. We wanted you to be able to develop on one machine and deploy on another. You are allowed to run your Hub, at whatever capacity you licensed, on both your development and testing servers.

Machine A

Machine A is the development machine. For the sake of this example, it is a Windows 95 machine. Delphi is installed here, and used with the WebHub components, to build EXEs that will run on Machine B. The web browser is also installed on this machine for testing against Machine B.

Machine B

Machine B is the deployment server. It must run Windows NT, version 3.51 or higher. The web server must be installed on this machine. If you don't already have the web server done, hold on! You need to take care of that before installing WebHub.

This example assumes that Machines A and B are connected via LAN. If not, you need a few more duplicated files.

Start by Installing on the deployment machine

Install everything - hub system, documentation, components, demos, everything -- on machine B. You can always delete the ht\lib32\ (the components) and ht\htdemos\ (the demos) after you are confident of your setup.

You may install to any drive. We recommend that you install to a directory \ht off the root of one of your drives, to keep the path names relatively short and so that the examples in the documentation will correspond closely to your actual setup.

Here is what you test to make sure you have things set up ok on Machine B:

http://localhost/   -- this tests your web server only
http://localhost/scripts/runisa.dll?echo  -- this tests your web server mapping to the webhub runner
http://localhost/scripts/runisa.dll?hubapp:systeminfo -- this tests the hub and your graphics mappings

All of the above should work before you make any INI file changes (and thereafter!).

File Categories

INI Files

href.ini. This is the only file with a required location. It must be in the windows\directory. It will install there on Machine B. Copy it to the windows directory on machine A. We will come back to it in a moment.
hubmain.ini. The default location for this file is in the root directory of your HREF Tools tree, e.g. c:\ht\hubmain.ini. If you are on a LAN, just use one copy of this file on Machine B.
Edit your href.ini file. Find the [webhub] section. Find the entry for IniFileName and set it to the correct location.
```
IniFileName=\\servername\c$\ht\hubmain.ini
```
It is important to use UNC naming conventions rather than drive letters when you are sharing files over a LAN. That way the definition will work when webhub runs on machine A or on machine B. You could copy this line into both href.ini files for consistency, just to be 100% sure that webhub was looking in exactly the same place for your setup in either case.
NB: there are times when you want to know which machine your app is running on. The SetupID property is meant for this. [? SetupID]
application-level INI files. Open the hubmain.ini file on Machine B. Look for the [websetups] section. You will see that there are a lot of directories listed, one for each of the demos. If you intend to work with the demos, you should do a quick search and replace to change c:\ht\htdemos to use UNC notation, e.g. \\servername\c$\ht\htdemos\ etc.

There are a *few* features in the demos that work off drive letters. You may need to make some other adjustments in specific demo .ini files as you go along. However, by keeping all the demo files on the server, you are most likely to have everything you need in the right place at run time.

Components and Packages

You really only need the components and packages on your development machine. Feel free to move (or copy) the files in ht\lib32 and ht\pkg to machine A.

If you are using Delphi 3 and want to use packages, you will need to copy the whuball.dpl package file (after you build it) from Machine A to Machine B. It needs to be in the same directory as your custom EXEs, or on the DOS PATH.

Documentation Files

Copy ht\doc\*.* to Machine A.

Demo Project Files and Custom EXEs

You should be able to open the demo projects on Machine B, from Machine A, using your LAN.

Set the project output directory to ht\htexe -- on machine B. That way the project will build on the deployment machine. Or, build the EXE locally and just copy it to ht\htexe\ when you are really ready to test.

This directory (ht\htexe) is totally up to you. Your application will connect to the Hub regardless of where it runs from. The only thing is that some demos guess at the location for their database files (e.g. fish store) based on the location of the EXE. Therefore, for the demos, it is best to run them from ht\htexe\.

Your Own Projects

When you are ready to make your own project, define the AppID in the hubmain.ini file on Machine B. You can do that through the Hub on Machine B, or by editing the INI file yourself, or by going through the TWebInfo|Edit Setups component in Delphi on Machine A. The latter is the slickest approach, and it will work. Try it. In Delphi, select the TWebInfo component in your project, probably on the appmain.pas form. Right-click. Select Edit Setups from the menu. You will get a property editor that points to the setups on Machine B. Make your change, click OK.

Your application INI and HTML files need to live on Machine B so that they can be served properly at run time. Your Delphi code can stay on Machine A, in any directory. We recommend that you make your own workspace, e.g. ht\practice\ or something on a totally separate directory tree.

When you set up the .Files list for your project (AppID|Edit Files), use UNC so that the chunk files are referenced on Machine B. For example:

[twebapp.files]
pages=\\servername\c$\ht\practice\app1\chunks\pages.htm
headfoot=\\servername\c$\ht\htdemos\htmldemo\shared\headfoot.htm

Remember that you have to pre-load your EXE before you test one of its pages. Run the EXE on Machine B, confirm that it shows on the Hub's connected panel, and then test one of its pages. You can always test AppID:INDEX as a quick check on any app. (Replace AppID with your own ID.)

If you have questions about any of these instructions, go to the Technical Support Center and request free support on installation.