Original Message:
Sent: Apr 24, 2026 05:44 PM
From: Nickolia Coombs
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
My apologies. I'll clarify. We officially support Microsoft HHC, so we tested with that. We did experiment with a tool from Free Pascal called chmcmd.exe, and it worked with some additional build tool script changes. We have not fully certified it or any other help compilers.
BTN86408 enables customers to reference other tools like Free Pascal. They would not be officially certified or supported by Broadcom but can be validated by users. Based on your feedback above, we updated the PTF solution description and created a backlog item to improve how Gen's GUI applications handle Help given the evolving industry standards. If this is important to you, I recommend submitting or voting for the idea in the Community, which influences how we prioritize items in the backlog
Original Message:
Sent: Apr 23, 2026 03:47 PM
From: STACY PICKETT
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
Thanks Nickolla .......... I guess I misunderstood the fix. I thought it was saying that the fix was to allow the build tool to specify a different Help Compiler other than HHC.exe which is discontinued and no longer maintained by Microsoft. The security software that scans our machines keeps flagging HHC.exe as a potential security threat since it is no longer updated. Our security team would like for us to use a different help compiler that is supported and maintained but Gen requires only HHC. We did work with Gen support a while back and received a potential Build Tool fix to allow other help compilers. It worked but we weren't able to find a good compiler at the time that worked seamlessly in the background like HHC.exe does. I thought this PTF might have been the implementation of that temporay fix we received. If so, I assumed they would have tested with another compiler to verify that the fix not only didn't require HHC but indeed worked with other compilers............. Thanks again 🙂
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Thanks
Original Message:
Sent: Apr 23, 2026 11:25 AM
From: Nickolia Coombs
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
Hi Stacy,
Gen did not use an alternative HTML Help Compiler. We used Microsoft's HHC.
Original Message:
Sent: Apr 22, 2026 11:41 AM
From: STACY PICKETT
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
Kim ........ For the HTML Help Compiler fix, did development / engineering have an alternative help compiler that they used to test with which works as seemlessly as HHC.exe ?
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Thanks
Original Message:
Sent: Apr 21, 2026 05:55 PM
From: Kim Peelman
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
New PTFs since April 13, 2026
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Kim Peelman
Engineering Manager, Gen
Broadcom
Plano, TX
Original Message:
Sent: Apr 10, 2026 05:30 PM
From: Kim Peelman
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
New PTFs since March 24, 2026:
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Kim Peelman
Engineering Manager, Gen
Broadcom
Plano, TX
Original Message:
Sent: Apr 22, 2025 03:34 PM
From: Kim Peelman
Subject: Gen's Published PTFs - Continuous Delivery of Value
To help you move towards Continuous Adoption of new PTFs, I will use this thread to provide you with a weekly list of new PTFs delivered for Gen. "Follow" this thread, and enable email notifications in your "Settings". (We recently published a Gen 8.6.4 Consolidation, so I'm starting a fresh thread.)
Background:
You may have noticed we've announced a lot of new enhancements for Gen, but we're always talking about the same version: 8.6. This is because Broadcom has moved to a Continuous Delivery model. This means we plan to be on v8.6 for a long time, and will deliver new enhancements frequently, but via PTFs rather than a new install version.
Continuous Delivery enables us to provide smaller deliverables, with lower risk, and faster realization of business value.
However, this doesn't mean much if you haven't moved to a Continuous Adoption model. The business case is well proven: Increased security. Continuous support. Accelerated Value. Lower risk. We know this can be a big change for an organization that is used to only applying changes every couple of years.
You can always find Gen's latest PTFs here:
Bonus Info: Would you like to multi-select to download multiple patches for your distributed Gen solutions? Here is an alternate view of your Gen 8.6 Solutions & Patches(distributed) with multi-select download.
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Kim Peelman
Kim.Peelman@broadcom.com
Product Owner, Gen
Broadcom
Plano, TX
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