#503 OWLMaker TLIB error

[Vidar Hasfjord]

OWLMaker may fail to build OWLNext with Embarcadero's classic toolset (BCC32), giving the following error:

System reported error: Bad file number
TLIB 7.1 Copyright (c) 1987-2019 Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
opening 'MAKE0001.@@@'

In particular, this issue may occur for subsequent builds after you have used the command "Tools | Stop build" for a previous build.

Workarounds: Restart OWLMaker. If that does not help, copy the build commands from the last page of the OWLMaker wizard, and execute them manually from a command prompt. Alternatively, you can skip OWLMaker altogether and build OWLNext from the command line using "bcmake.bat" or "bc.mak" (see our Installation Guide).

Note that this issue only occurs with the classic toolset (BCC32). It does not occur with Embarcadero's new Clang-based toolsets (BCC32C and BCC64). In OWLNext 7, only the latter toolsets are supported, so this issue only affects 6.44 and earlier. Hence, a good solution is to migrate your project to the modern Clang-based toolsets, which will also allow you to upgrade to OWLNext 7.

For user reports about this issue, see "OWLMaker TLIB error" [discussion:2780d1a0dd] and "Problem building OWLNext 6.44 with C++ Builder 10.4" [discussion:7e622b0743].

[Vidar Hasfjord]

If it turns out that this issue occurs consistently or with higher frequency within OWLMaker, a possible solution to explore is whether encapsulating the make-file within an MSBuild project eliminates or alleviates the issue. See discussion in [bugs:#534].

[Vidar Hasfjord]

Since the usage of the unreliable CTRL_BREAK_EVENT signal was eliminated in [r6831], the issues relating to unreliable operation after "Stop build" seem to be eliminated as well. The new implementation of "Stop build", which just kills the build processes, works near instantly, seemingly without any issues.

I have hence closed this ticket.