Allow comparison of VI Heirachy without actually opening a project

[mattjsimps]

What Happens Now:

Hmm, I want to compare these two vi heirachies.

Open LabVIEW

Goto Tools -> Compare

What? Why cant i compare heirachies? I am sure I did it yesterday

Scratch Head....

Oh yeah, i need to open a project.

Open a project.

Goto Tools-> Compare VI Hierachy

Grumble Grumble Grumble 

What Should Happen:

Hmm, I want to compare these two vi heirachies

Open Labview

Goto Tools-> Compare VI Hierachy

See? isnt that better? 

[dthor]

How would Labview know which two hierarchies you want to compare if you don't open the projects...?

[mattjsimps]

You dont have to currently open both.

In my haste i forgot to mention a step after :

Goto Tools-> Compare VI Hierachy

is currently:

Specifiy which two hierachies you want to compare.

When you do this, it loads both into memory.

Since you need to tell it what you want to compare anyway, it seems silly ahving to open a (possibly unrelated, empty) project. 

[AristosQueue (NI)]

The project requirement is so that we can have two hierarchies in memory that have the same names. The project creates the name sandbox that allows this to work. When comparing a single VI, we can rename one of the VIs to prevent the collision, but with a hierarchy, there are things that refer to the subVIs that might break and would, at the very least, create additional diff noise. Thus the project requirement for comparing entire hierarchies.

Having said that, I agree with you that this is not as obvious as it could be. We could possibly do something like automatically create the new project for you.

[mattjsimps]

Ah, I think I understand.

But:

The fact that you effectively need to namespace the VIs is an implementation issue. It should happen automatically behind the scenes.

And it doesnt seem that the project you open even has to contain either of the heirarchies, so there is no reason whatsover for the user to have to open one explictly.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> It should happen automatically behind the scenes.

Yes, that's what I said at the end. 🙂

[Darren]

Any idea that has not received any kudos within a year after posting will be automatically declined.