Revision Control Best Practices

[Kyle97330]

One other thing to note.  While there isn't really a workable "merge" option, there is one for doing a diff.  "LVcompare".

This article shows how to set up TortoiseSVN to use with LabVIEW and "LVcompare":

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019ZhbSAE&l=en-US

It should work just about the same if you use TortoiseGIT instead.

If you use something else, you can search for that or just run LVcompare manually.  It's here:

National Instruments\Shared\LabVIEW Compare

[tst]

To be clear, NI has both diff and merge utilities for LV, but neither of them is that great and I believe they only come with the pro version. The problem of diffing and merging graphs is more complex than for text and there are certain things where LV isn't great about making clear exactly what the change is.

Also, keep in mind that you will have multiple files. Each typedef is a file, each function is a file, etc., which affects how many files you have in a commit. Ideally, you would want to have VIs which are small and simple and do specific actions. And as with text, you would want to keep your commits small if possible.

Besides all that, you might want to consider that NI has moved for a subscription model for LV. If you don't pay, you can't edit and compile. The license for the community edition does allow you to open the code to look at it, but the utility of that is limited.