Tool -> Source Control

[Chris9876]

I am trying to configure Perforce with LabVIEW but when I navigate to the Tools->Options there is no "Source Control" option available? 

[Jacobson-ni · Accepted solution]

Do you have LabVIEW Professional or are you using Full/Base?

[Hooovahh]

You can try to use the built in SCC functionality, but honestly when I had to use Perforce I ended up using plugin for Windows Explorer that added right click menus like Tortoise SVN.

https://www.perforce.com/plugins-integrations/windows-explorer-plugin

Then when you are in LabVIEW and click save, it tells you the file is read-only and opens an explorer window to where the file is (if the file is locked).  From that window I'd right click and get the lock (or checkout I forget the term) then close the window and save again.  The SCC stuff built into LabVIEW feels like a utility that was half complete in 2004, and has never been updated.  I've found tools external to LabVIEW generally work better, except for the rare occasion I need to rename a file in the project and SCC.

[cbutcher]

I found this thread (link to 3rd page), and particularly the post by Tassos at the top of the 3rd page, as very helpful for setting up Git to do what I wanted for LabVIEW. Some of the earlier pages have useful links regarding SVN also.

[JimChretz]

Hello,

I am a "LabVIEW Full" Edition user and just found out "Compare and Merge" are available in LabVIEW 2022.

Although I was surprized to see that Source Control option doesn't seem to be available.

I was wondering if it's still reserved for Pro users or if there's a way to have it as well as diff/merge ?

Best,

Jimmy

[Hooovahh]

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@JimChretz wrote:

I was wondering if it's still reserved for Pro users or if there's a way to have it as well as diff/merge

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I can't say what version it is locked to, but SCC does feel like a Pro feature.  That being said you aren't missing out on much.  Last I knew the native LabVIEW SCC only worked with ancient SCC systems.  I believe Visual SourceSafe was supported, and maybe Perforce?  Subversion, and Git are not supported.  I stand my statement 6 years ago.  You are currently better off with 3rd party integration, or using external tools.

[JimChretz]

Yeah that's what I had on mind.

Though in LV21 release notes there was "improved LVCompare functionality for git", I was wondering what that's supposed to mean if it's not natively part of Source Control feature...

[Hooovahh]

Oh neat I missed that.  I suspect the release notes are specific to the LVCompare utility, which is separate from the SCC tools.  In SVN you can configure it to use an external tool for performing the compare between revisions.  So I suspect the change here is that the LVCompare tool now works better with git, when git is configured to use LVCompare.  Just a guess though.

[JimB.]

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@JimChretz wrote:

Hello,

I am a "LabVIEW Full" Edition user and just found out "Compare and Merge" are available in LabVIEW 2022.

Although I was surprized to see that Source Control option doesn't seem to be available.

I was wondering if it's still reserved for Pro users or if there's a way to have it as well as diff/merge ?

Best,

Jimmy

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You can see the edition comparison here: https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/labview/select-edition.html

Graphical Diff (LVCompare) is supported across all editions, but merge is reserved for Pro.

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@JimChretz wrote:

Though in LV21 release notes there was "improved LVCompare functionality for git", I was wondering what that's supposed to mean if it's not natively part of Source Control feature...

---

One would assume (I honestly don't remember) that LVCompare is more or less preconfigured with the built-in source control features, but you can configure other clients to use it as well. (I'm not sure what changed that would make it better specifically for Git.)

The native Source Control feature does not work with Git. It does work with anything that uses the Microsoft Source Code Control Interface, which Git does not... but I don't think much else does either these days. IIRC, I had to install some extra utility to make it work with Perforce a couple years ago as that interface isn't supported in the typical configuration. Frankly, it wasn't worth the effort. Hooovahh is pretty spot on with what he said about that feature. I tried it for a little while, but it wasn't a great experience and I just went back to using P4V.

[rolfk]

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@JimB. wrote:

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The native Source Control feature does not work with Git. It does work with anything that uses the Microsoft Source Code Control Interface, which Git does not... but I don't think much else does either these days. IIRC, I had to install some extra utility to make it work with Perforce a couple years ago as that interface isn't supported in the typical configuration. Frankly, it wasn't worth the effort. Hooovahh is pretty spot on with what he said about that feature. I tried it for a little while, but it wasn't a great experience and I just went back to using P4V.

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That interface was invented by Microsoft over 20 years ago to allow integration of Visual Source Safe into other systems. But Microsoft was never able to make Visual Source Safe a safe to use system for trusting all your source code to it. And that interface is very much modeled around the old Checkout and Lock, and Checkin and Unlock idea.

Other source code control systems implemented a plugin for the VSSSCM API such as Perforce and there also was one or two for SubVersions but they were not free and seldom used, since Tortoise SVN simply works so much better. 😁

I don't think anyone ever bothered to write a VSSSCM plugin for GIT, by the time GIT got really popular Visual Source Safe was already an almost unused package, unless maybe in some shops that had gotten stuck in 1990 tech.

There seems to be a Jenkins VSSSCM plugin however! https://javadoc.jenkins.io/plugin/vss/scm/vss/VSSSCM.html But its status is deprecated.