Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 for Eclipse (Windows) > Welcome > Upgrading to Visual COBOL for Eclipse > Differences between Visual COBOL and Net Express, Server Express > Compiling and Building Differences > Makefile Conversion

Makefile Conversion

You cannot use existing makefiles from inside Visual COBOL for Eclipse without changing some Eclipse defaults and adopting a modified build process. Where makefiles invoke commands supported by Visual COBOL they will continue to work as before. Please contact Micro Focus for more information on using existing makefiles.

Visual COBOL for Eclipse uses an ANT script, .cobolBuild, to build COBOL projects. This script is automatically generated from the .cobolProj project file. It is not possible to configure the IDE so that it uses existing external build scripts (such as makefiles, msbuild, shell scripts or others) for building COBOL applications.

You can still use existing build scripts to build COBOL applications outside of the IDE. You can set your own shell scripts as pre-build and post-build events and they will execute as part of the .cobolBuild ANT script before or after compiling.

Right-click on your project in the Navigator view and select Properties.
Expand Micro Focus COBOL > Build Configurations and click Events for the desired configuration.
Type the code of the script in the Pre-build event command line field or Post-build event command line field.
Click Apply and then OK.

To set pre-build and post-build events:

Please contact Micro Focus for more information on using existing makefiles.