To convert the existing workspace (PBW) to the solution (PBSLN), you can right-click the workspace and then select Convert Workspace to Solution.
Before converting the workspace to the solution, you are strongly recommended to:
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Rename PBLs or objects with the same name to avoid duplication during conversion.
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Optimize the PBL and then full build the target (PBT).
During the process of converting a workspace to a solution:
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.pbw will be converted to .pbsln under the same directory
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.pbt will be converted to .pbproj under the same directory
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PBL file will be converted to PBL folder under the same directory. The PBL folder and the PBL file will have the same name (the file extension ".pbl" will be part of the folder name), for example, if the PBL file name is a.pbl, then the converted PBL folder is named as "a.pbl". The objects' source code in the PBL file will be split and stored as individual files in text format (.sr* files) under the PBL folder, and Pcode in the PBL file will be split and stored as individual files (in binary format) under separate folders (".pb" and "build" folders).
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The comments of the PBL are stored in the .pblmeta file (each PBL folder has a .pblmeta file), and the comments of the object are stored with the source code.
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.pbw, .pbt, .pbl, and .user.opt files and ws_objects folder will be backed up to a sub-folder named "_BackupFiles" under each file's location. If the .pbl file is located outside the directory of the .pbt file, the .pbl file will be backed up with a .bak suffix in its original location.
You can remove these "_BackupFiles" folders after converting to solution successfully, or keep these folders in case you want to go back to the workspace.
The workspace can be converted to the solution, but the solution cannot be converted to the workspace. To work with the original workspace, you can get files back from these "_BackupFiles" folders.
Note
Machine code is unsupported in the solution format. If the application project selects to generate machine code, it will be changed to select Pcode automatically when converting to the solution format.
After converting to the new solution format, all project types (including traditional C/S Application projects, PowerClient projects, and PowerServer projects) will automatically benefit from the ultra-fast compiler.
Note
If the workspace is under source control, you cannot directly convert the workspace to solution (the Convert Workspace to Solution menu is greyed out). You can make a copy of the entire workspace, remove source control from this copy, convert this copy to solution, and then add it (as a branch) to the source control. Notice that the change logs will not be carried over to the new branch unless you manually adjust the repo content.
Source files in UTF-8 encoding
The source files generated during migration to the solution and the .pbsln/.pbproj/.pblmeta files are encoded using UTF-8 instead of the Unicode 16LE encoding. UTF-8 was chosen because the compiler only supports this encoding format and it is more space-efficient.
You can use the Import/Export option to transfer source files between UTF-8 and Unicode 16LE encodings.
You can specify whether UTF-8 includes BOM or not in the PB.INI file:
[library] DefaultEncoding=64 // 4 (default) indicates UTF-8 with BOM, 64 indicates UTF-8 without BOM, other values will be processed as 4.
