Build rules

[Andrew]

I have a question about nested groups and build rules.

Outside a group I initialize a macro SKIP with the value 1. The group 'Group' has a build rule to build only if the macro SKIP is not equal to 1. This has the desired effect and the group is skipped. The following steps are also skipped but the subgroup 'Subgroup' that also has a build rule gives a macro error because the macro that is used in the build rule was never created because it is skipped.

Now for the question, am I correct in assuming that if a group is skipped, all the substeps should be skipped (even if they have a build rule that can't be executed)?

Attached you can find a sample project that has the described effect.

PS: I'm using vbp 5.7

[kinook]

By design, build rules are evaluated for each step, even child steps of a build rule that was skipped (to accommodate the option for whether nesting of build rules and 'include in build' is turned on (Tools | Application Options | General). We're considering optimizing this for the case where nesting is enabled, but we do have to be careful about compatibility with previous versions. One way to get around this is to put the child step(s) with build rules in a subroutine, since the build rules in a subroutine won't get evaluated if the subroutine is not called.