Quite often you may need to create different versions of your application from the same sources: for instance, a debug version, a demo version or a release version. Typically, macros that generate these versions are a bit different: there are just some changes in the logic, operation properties and values of constants and stored variables. For example, when using the Compile Visual C++ 6.0 Project operation, you may want to disable all optimizations for the debug version, but turn on optimization for the release version.

You can create an individual macro to generate each version independently, but this approach is not efficient, because these macros will have lots of identical parts. Of course, you could divide the reusable logic parts into submacros or external macros. But in this case, you would still have to manage several macros, which is not convenient either.

Using macro configurations, you can easily solve these problems. A configuration includes values of operation properties as well as values of the macro constants and variables. Each configuration (that is, all the settings that are unified by a configuration) is part of a macro. You create the operation hierarchy and the set of variables and custom constants only once and then, using individual configurations, work with data specific to a particular configuration. That is, instead of creating several macros, you can create only one macro with several configurations for generating several application versions from the same sources. You can select the desired configuration before the macro run:

To manage macro configurations, Automated Build Studio includes a special dialog.

As you can see, use of macro configurations allows you to create a single macro and reuse it multiple times, changing its nature by simply selecting a different configuration. Using operation properties you can even change the operation hierarchy to some extent, without adding or removing operations (this can be achieved by using the Enabled property of some operations).