Difference between Building and Publishing?

[ccardimon]

When I build a project, is that the same as publishing it?

I built a project and looked at the preview, which looked fine, but I couldn't find the document in the preview anywhere in the filesystem.

I will be looking through the help, but can someone explain the difference between building and publishing in simple terms?

[KevinDAmery]

The short version is, Building creates your target output file, while Publishing builds your target output file and uploads to a web or ftp address. You would use Build if you want to create the target and then handle where to put it yourself (for example, give it to development to include in a build or to QA to test if it's working, etc.). You would use Publish if you wanted to update an online location with the latest version of the help.

Of course, publish only makes sense in cases where your output can be accessed meaningfully over the web (e.g. if you are hosting WebHelp from your servers). It doesn't make sense for most print output formats or for CHM.

[ccardimon]

Thank you!