Custom tools overview

The Tools menu is a user-configurable menu that allows you to access personal tools from the HCL OneTest™ Embedded graphical user interface (GUI). You can customize the Tools menu to meet your own requirements.

Custom tools can be applied to a selection of nodes in the Project Explorer. Selected nodes can be sent as a parameter to a user-defined tool application. A series of macro variables is available to pass parameters on to your tool's command line.

The Tool Configuration dialog allows you to configure a new or existing tool.

In the Tools menu, each tool appears as a sub-menu item, or Name, with one or several associated actions or Captions.

Identification

In this tab, you describe how the tool will appear in the Tools menu.

Enter the Name of the tool sub-menu as it will appear in the Tools menu and a Comment that is displayed in the lower section of the Toolbox dialog box.
Select the type of tool:
- Select Change Management System if the tool is used to send and retrieve from a change management system. When Change Management System is selected, Check In and Check Out actions are automatically added to the Action tab (see below) and a Change Management System toolbar is activated.
- Select External Editor if the tool is an editor. When External Editor is selected, you can select Automatic Launch if you want this editor to replace theHCL OneTest™ Embedded editor for file extensions specified in the Files Filter list. (for example: "*.c;*.cpp;*.txt").
- Select Other if the tool is neither a configuration management tool nor an editor.
Clear the Add to Tools menu check box if you do not want the tool to be added to the Tools menu.
Select Send messages to custom tab if you want to view the tool's text output to be sent to a specific tab in the Output Window.
Use the Icon button to attach a custom icon to the tool that will appear in the Tools menu. Icons must be either .xpm or .png graphic files and have a size of 22x22 pixels.

Actions

This tab allows you to describe one or several actions for the tool.

The Actions list displays the list of actions associated with the tool. If Change Management System is selected on the Identification tab, Check In and Check Out tool commands will listed here. These cannot be renamed or removed.
Menu text is the name of the action that will appear in the Tools sub-menu.
Command is a shell command line that will be executed when the tool action is selected from Tools menu. Command lines can include GUI macro variables and functions.

A series of macro variables is available to pass parameters on to your tool's command line. See GUI Macro Variables in the Reference section for detailed information about using the macro command language.

Click OK to validate any changes made to the Tool Edit dialog box.

Examples

IBM Rational ClearCase is pre-configured in the Tools menu as the default configuration management tool. If you are using another tool you can simply add it to the Tools menu. For example, to add CVS to the Tools menu:

Select Tools > Configure Tools and click Add.
On the Identification page, enter CVS in the Name field, and select Change Management System.
On the Actions page, enter the following command lines:
- Add to Source Control: cvs -add $$VCSITEMS
- Check Out: cvs -co $$VCSITEMS
- Check In: cvs -ci $$VCSITEMS
Click OK.

To add, for example, the Windows Notepad editor to the Tools menu:

Select Tools > Configure Tools and click Add.
On the Identification page, enter Notepad in the name field, and select External Editor.
If you want Notepad to replace the default editor for .c files for example, then select Automatic launch and enter:

*.c

On the Actions page, enter:

notepad.exe $$NODEPATH

Click OK.