Unexpected .tws behavior

[jvh75021]

My original workspace file is on a CD as were all the sequence files and VIs. While troubleshooting a deployment build problem I cut out many sequences and VIs from the workspace file. In an attempt to restore the file to original I copied it from the CD to the location on disk. The copy worked fine but when opened it still looked like the cut down version. Then I deleted the one on disk and copied from CD again. Same results. Next I opened the .tsw in TestStand from the CD. It looked like the original and I saved it to disk. When I open it again I see the cut down version.

What is happening here?

thanks,

jvh 

[jvh75021]

Kudos to Ben @ NI Austin for the workaround. 

  Close testStand.

  Copy from CD to disk.

  Open .tws from disk.

Looks like ts was holding on to the file handle.

However I still think there is a bug. Shouldn't I be able to open a .tws from CD and then save it to disk? No can do.

jvh 

[dug9000]

Workspace files have project files associated with them. Workspace files themselves mainly just store the location of the project files (.tpj files). It's the project files that store the location of all of the other files in your workspace. Therefore your edits were likely to the project files, and not the workspace file.

Thus overwriting the workspace file does not restore things to the original configuration unless you also overwrite the project files it refers to.

Another issue is that the workspace generally stores a simple pathname for the project files and finds the absolute directory location based on the TestStand search directory algorithm. Thus, if the project files are in the same directory as the workspace it will generally find them there first. This explains why when you opened the workspace on the CD you got the old versions of the projects and then when you resaved the workspace to the local drive and then closed and reopened it, you then got the modified versions of the project files.

The advantage of having projects like this is that you then have the potential to share projects among multiple different workspaces without having to duplicate the configuration info which projects store.

Hope this helps clarify things. Let me know if you have additional questions related to this.

-Doug

Message Edited by dug9000 on 02-23-2010 09:47 AM