How to set copybook paths in shared directives file in Visual COBOL

It has this warning about the COPYPATH directive because the IDE itself sets COPYPATH depending on the values set in the project properties.

The IDE also makes use of the COBCPY environment variable to locate certain system source files.

When you set COPYPATH yourself, the IDE will no longer look at COBCPY so it may not find some required system copybook files.

It is recommended that if you are using the Visual Studio IDE to build your projects that you either set the copy path in the project properties or for global use set the locations in the COBCPY environment variable at the system level.

Scot may have a different recommendation here but this is my understanding of the issue...

Ok, so we removed the COPYPATH directive from the shared directives file.  I have a further question.

Our machine has both Net Express 5.1 and Visual Studio 2010 with Visual COBOL 2.1.  We are porting our NX projects to Visual COBOL.  The NX and Visual COBOL versions of our application each have their own copybook directories.  COBCPY on the control panel's environmental variables screen points to the

NX copybook directory.  NX also has its own system copybooks under "Program Files (x86)" and Visual COBOL has its system copybooks under "Program Files (x86)".  By system copybooks I mean the ones that are provided by Micro Focus.

For a Visual COBOL project, we set the Copybook Paths property on the properties screen to point

to the copybooks directory of the Visual COBOL version of our application.  This directory holds the copybooks we have created and has none of the system copybooks.  When we build the project, the

compiler first looks in this directory then looks in the directory defined by COBCPY.  Is that correct ?

For system copybooks (such as mfole.cpy and createactivex.cpy) the compiler looks under "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Micro Focus\\Visual COBOL\\cpylib".  Is that right ?

Yes, If you have a copy path specified in the project properties it will be searched first and then the locations specified within the COBCPY environment variable will be searched next.

The COBCPY environment variable has default settings that are stored in the System Registry entries for both Net Express and Visual COBOL products, so depending on which IDE you are using it will look in the correct location for that product.

For Visual COBOL the default locations are set to:

%COBCPY%;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Micro Focus\\Visual COBOL\\cpylib\\;C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Micro Focus\\Visual COBOL\\cpylib\\basecl

Thanks.

We have two copybook directories:

s:\\v54\\awcbl\\cpy  for the NX version of our application

c:\\vcobol\\cpy for the Visual COBOL version of our application

COBCPY (on the Control Panel) is set to s:\\v54\\awcbl\\cpy

We do not want Visual COBOL to look for a copybook in this directory.

Would this work ?

 We are already running Visual Studio from a shortcut to a batch file.

 The batch file sets COBDIR for the Visual COBOL version of our application.

 This overrides the COBDIR setting on the Control Panel, which is set for our

 Net Express application.

 We could also add COPCPY to this batch file to point to c:\\vcobol\\cpy.  This way

 Visual COBOL will never look in s:\\v54\\awcbl\\cpy.

Yes, setting COBCPY in a .bat file prior to executing devenv.exe will override the value set in the control panel as long as you don't include the %COBCPY% as part of the value.

This will work:

SET COBCPY=c:\\vcobol\\cpy

devenv.exe

This will not:

SET COBCPY=%COBCPY%;c:\\vcobol\\cpy

devenv.exe