How to make a "dynamic" Perforce Client Spec

[Conrad Weyns]

I am new to VBP. After 30 minutes use, I passed the point of no return :-)
The first step in my .bld is the "Perforce" tool for retrieving the latet version of a large devstudio solution.
There was no problem getting this to work.
Now I'd like to try something more advanced and share this .bld file through the Perforce depot.
This means I need to figure out a way to make a cleaver Perforce step where the local path og the .bld file somehow gets mapped to "a" or "the" correct Perforce Client Spec.
Of the 4 parameters in the Global Options, only the Port is static. The Client, Host and User need to be dynamic.
Has anyone attempted this or something similar? Any recommendations?
Conrad Weyns

[kinook]

Where do these dynamic values originate? The path+filename of the .bld file? You should be able to write some script expressions [1] to parse out the values, calling from each dynamic field as needed.

[1] http://www.visualbuild.com/Manual/?scriptexpressions.htm

[Conrad Weyns]

Many thanks for your quick reply.
I have been studying all the samples and realize I need to do my homework first :-) I found one example where a Perforce client spec was created on the fly. This got me started. I use lots of client specs myself but never thought of creating one on the fly! This was much easier than what I was trying to do.

With a few Macros and a minimum of prerequisites:
1. Machine has the Perforce client installed.
2. Machine has Visual studio installed.
3. Logged in user name = a Perforce user with necessary rights.

I was able to move a .bld file around, create a client spec and get the latests source relative to the build file and start building.

Eventually, I'd like to show how one can from a singular maintained .bld file, copied to any directory on any machine with the above prerequites, build a complete release target without ever having to set up anything in particular.

So I guess I am now merely causing noise here and should stop!
Thanks again.
Conrad