# Best practice in using Help and Manual master and child projects

**URL:** https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/t/best-practice-in-using-help-and-manual-master-and-child-projects/1803
**Category:** Discussion
**Created:** [July 9, 2011, 8:05am UTC](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/t/best-practice-in-using-help-and-manual-master-and-child-projects/1803 "2011-07-09T08:05:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![deleted\_user](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/user_avatar/www.finalbuilder.com/deleted_user/32/937_2.png) [@deleted\_user](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/u/deleted_user)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2011, 8:05am UTC](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/t/best-practice-in-using-help-and-manual-master-and-child-projects/1803/1 "2011-07-09T08:05:14Z")

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I have a number of help and manual 5 projects.

They are very modular and I require CHM output (merged at runtime) and PDF (merged at publish). A typical structure of the projects is shown below where P1, P2 etc are the master projects, L1, L2 etc are the next level of 'libraries' and LA,LB etc are a further level of libraries as children of L1 etc.

L1-LA,LB,LC,LD etc

L2

P1-L1,L2

P2-L1

P3-LA,LC

For example, project P1 uses the libraries L1 and L2. Library L1 uses LA,LB,LC and LD.

H&M seems to encode child projects with&nbsp;absolute paths and this seems to require me to work on a documentation project at a fixed disk location. Can I presume therefore that the best way of using FB with H&M is to pick a disk location, knit the project and libraries together so that they publish manually in this location and then use FB to pull the H&M source from elsewhere on disk (or svn), FB builds the project in this 'defined' lolcation and then FB copies the build output (PDF, CHM) back to a published location (or as source for installer).

This seems messy but necessary. Is there a better way?

Thanks

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### Author: ![Vincent](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/user_avatar/www.finalbuilder.com/vincent/32/938_2.png) [@Vincent](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/u/Vincent)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2011, 5:49am UTC](https://www.finalbuilder.com/forums/t/best-practice-in-using-help-and-manual-master-and-child-projects/1803/2 "2011-07-11T05:49:41Z")

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The FinalBuilder H&M action has no “knowledge” of child projects. I believe the HM projects are xml files, so perhaps you can use the xml actions to modify the paths before building the projects?