Random Ramblings on LabVIEW Design

I've been in recovery mode so have been neglecting pretty much everything except paid work and rebuilding our infrastructure.

If anyone else wants to follow a similar path here's what I have done and how I have done it.

First I hired a VPS . The first challenge is how do I talk to it? I'm a Linux imbecile by the way.

PuTTY is the answer and you get presented with a screen like this.

Next we need to secure our server and to do this we need to create a new user and disable remote access to the root user. Here's how.

One way I like to edit files in Linux is vim.

You can press "I" to go into INSERT mode and and "ESC" to go to command mode, :w to write, :q to quit.

Another cool thing in Linux is you can type > man command and this will bring up the manual for the selected command....very nice, "Q" to quit.

Next I want to load Subversion (I will probably trial Mercurial soon). Here is a very good article on doing this.

I decided to use svnserve as the interface to connect to Subversion. Mainly for speed and ease. This also has the advantage of amazing speed, but it uses a port usually blocked by IT so eventually I will need to add HTTPS capabilities too. Another job for another day!.

I wanted the creation of repositories to be as seamless as possible. Within SSDC we have a Project Management tool that would be the ideal place to bung in Subversion stuff. I added functionality for creating and viewing repositories.

Talking to the server from LabVIEW was pretty easy using a program that came with PuTTY called Plink. This program takes a file of commands and applies them to the server as if typed. Here's the code for creating a new repo.

To control access to the repository I copy a template configuration file as follows.

I need now to make back-ups and FTP them out to a local machine, this will be the subject of Part 2.

In Part 3 I will show how our bug reporting tool has been implemented. This is just being tested as part of our General Template.

And then I'll be back on Open Document duties, sorry about the wait.

Expect various articles on Requirement Zero, Mr Conway and I were going to do a presentation on it for NIDays, maybe NIWeek 2015.

If you're going to NIWeek, travel safe and have fun. I'll be sunning myself in San Diego.

Lots of Love

Steve