The blade control file

The blade control file enables you to tell the Deployment Framework which other Platform blades a blade requires and which blades it’s incompatible with.

This feature is available in releases of the Deployment Framework from 6.0.4 onwards

File location

The file is called control and must be located in the root directory of the blade. For example: <Framework-root>/kits/TradeFXBlade/TradeFXBlade/control

File format

It’s a text file with the following format:

Type:      JTMBlade
Conflicts: <blade-name> <blade-name> ...
Depends:   <blade-name> <blade-name> ...
Suggests:  <blade-name> <blade-name> ...

Each line is optional (except Type: for Transformer Service blades written in Java - see below), but there must be at least one line in the file.

Type

Only add this line if your blade is a Transformer Service blade written in Java; see How To…​ Create a Java-based Transformer Service Blade.

Conflicts

This defines a list of blades that your blade conflicts with. If your blade is active then none of the blades in this list should be active. The syntax allows multiple lines; for example:

Conflicts: BladeA BladeB
Conflicts: BladeC

This example means when your blade is active, BladeA, BladeB and BladeC must all be set inactive, otherwise any attempt to start the Framework will fail, displaying a message detailing the conflict.

Depends

This defines the blades that your blade requires to work. If your blade is active then these blades must also be active. The syntax allows multiple lines; for example:

Depends: BladeA BladeB
Depends: BladeC

This example means that when your blade is active, either BladeA or BladeB (or both) must be active, and BladeC must be active too. If this condition isn’t met, any attempt to start the Framework will fail, displaying a message describing the problem.

Suggests

This is syntacticly like Depends:

For example:

Suggests: BladeD BladeE
Suggests: BladeF

Suggests: means that the blades you specify are ones that your active blade will work better with but doesn’t absolutely require to be active to in order to function properly. If this condition isn’t met, the Framework can still be started, but a message describing any conflict is displayed.


See also: