Moving Project development to a 2nd Laptop, Project missing "Get Robot Competition Mode.vi"

[tr6scott]

We have a programming laptop that all of the Labview development has been done on for 3 years now. We are having wireless issues with network card, and want to move development to a 2nd laptop with a clean build of XP, and to do a wipe and install on the older laptop.

Our current project saving plan is that every day we start and end the day with making and new .llb file and project file, and safe work off to thumbdrive and hard drive. Files are date and timestamped in the file naming structure.

Problem is that when we open the .llb file on the 2nd computer, all of the vi's load but "Get Robot Competition Mode.vi"

If we open robot main, there is a vi with a question mark on it, and program will not be able to be run or deployed.

We have tried this on two laptops now with the same results, so it appreas that the vi is not being packaged up when the .llb or project is created for backup.

All laptops are running the latest patch version of labview, 2-26 update.

Questions:

(FYI First year Mentor working with Labview for the first time, the Senors on the team have been doing the work of saving and orgainizing, we have not had an issue with lost work, so this method has not been scrtinzed by me.)

1. Is this the "Best Practice" method of archiving and saving Labview work?

2. Can we make the project work by just finding the missing vi on the old computer and copying to new? If so what directory should it be placed in?

3. What are we doing wrong on the old computer, so that .vi is not being packaged in the .llb in the first place?

I have searched here and chief delphi, and this problem does not apper to be an issue for other teams, as there was no posts about it, so please answer or link to what I need to do to fix.

Thanks for the help!

TORC 2137

[nathand]

Quick guess here - is your current code based on last year's code?  It's possible that that VI was part of last year's development environment and was removed or renamed for this year.  Since you've been using the same machine for development for several years you likely have the VIs from previous years available on it.  The VI that you're looking for may have been part of the FRC library, so it would be excluded from your build.  If that VI isn't part of this year's FRC library, then a fresh install won't have it and you'll get an error.  Easiest solution is to copy that VI onto the new machine, but it might be better to upgrade your code to match this year's framework.

As for the archiving scheme, the best solution is a source control system.  There are a few that are available for free and you can probably find a post on this forum about how to set one up; I haven't done so personally for an FRC team.  Another option for you would be to create a "source distribution" build specification that exports your entire tree to a zip file.  I don't recomend using an LLB; NI seems to be moving slowly away from them and it's a non-standard, LabVIEW-specific format.  It's difficult to get a single file out of an LLB if that's all you need from a previous version.  A large collection of LLBs named only by date stamp is hard to manage; after a few days you'll lose track of what changes were made in which version unless you keep detailed notes somewhere.  It may be easier to keep only the most recent working version rather than every past version.