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AristosQueue (NI)

Autorun VI Analyzer when source code control checks in VI

Status: New

Summary: We should add an option to LabVIEW so that if you have the VI Analyzer installed, whenever you use source code control to check in a modified VI, the VI Analyzer runs with a predefined list of settings to make sure that the modified VI meets the standards you've chosen.

 

Details: There are many aspects of a VI that ought to be a certain way when the VI is considered "finished" that ought not to actually break the VI. For example, you might want the text in your free lables to be spell checked correctly on a finished VI, but you don't really want the VI broken while debugging if you have misspelled words. You might not want coercion dots in the final VI, but breaking VIs when you have coercion dots during development is overkill. At the moment, you have an option of turning on Show Warnings in the Error List Window for a lot of these sorts of things, and LabVIEW R&D could add more to the warnings list, but there are so many things that we warn you about that the list is just noise, and since warnings are off by default, most people never see them. Your other option is to remember to run the VI Analyzer before you check in your VIs, but not everyone remembers to do that everytime. If the analysis could autorun as part of check in, it would help ensure good standards for VIs. I suggest that LV should have some way for the user to establish a list of settings for which VI Analyzer tests to run every time VIs are checked into source code control.

3 Comments
PhillipBrooks
Active Participant

Aristos Queue wrote: 
I suggest that LV should have some way for the user to establish a list of settings for which VI Analyzer tests to run every time VIs are checked into source code control.

This could also be useful without source control.  VI Analyzer already has the ability to save a Task (custom list of tests to perform) to a file.

 

What would be nice is the ability to associate a specific Task file to an element of a LabVIEW project/library tree.

 

Add the task file to the project, associate elements of the project to the task.  Allow for multiple task files and for one of them to be set as the default (if desired).

 

The project/library could have settings that would define when the analysis should be performed

 

   o   when the VI is saved

   o   when the project is saved

   o   when the application is built

   o   when the VI is checked into source control

 

Unfortunately, the 2009 Release Notes indicate that VI Analyzer will be an optional toolkit ($).  Darren indicated that some VI Analyzer functionality will still be available, but I don't know if custom tasks would be possible without this tookit.


Message Edited by Phillip Brooks on 09-02-2009 01:41 PM

Now is the right time to use %^<%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%3uZ>T
If you don't hate time zones, you're not a real programmer.

"You are what you don't automate"
Inplaceness is synonymous with insidiousness

crelf
Trusted Enthusiast
I don't think this is a "LabVIEW should..." per se: we have a server that runs a bunch of custom automated stuff off-peak like VI Analyzer analysis, advanced code metrics, requiremetns coverage (using the NIRG API), etc, and the data is reported in Sharepoint project sites (it's integrated with SVN and our project tracking software, so it automatically checks out a fresh copy of each active project and works on them locally).  I think it should be more of a "the API for <insert_product_name_here> should be opened up so we can <insert_custom_automated_task_here>"




Copyright © 2004-2023 Christopher G. Relf. Some Rights Reserved. This posting is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Jim_Kring
Trusted Enthusiast
This sounds more like a great continuous integration feature, rather than a LabVIEW feature coupled to SCC.