Its the little things...

[psmorris]

So, I was rearranging my disk hierarchy as part of a repository refactoring... I did all the moving of LabVIEW related files from within the affected project in LabVIEW. I ran my unit tests (in UTF) half expecting them to complain that they couldnt find the .vis under test. To my delight, not one test failed because it couldnt find the vi under test - wonder of wonders, LabVIEW had updated the test files to the new VI locations... 

My happiness ended there however... some tests did still error out because LabVIEW had NOT updated the locations of the setup and teardown .vis which had also been moved during the restructuring. So, I opened the first test that errored out in the UTF and updated the location of the setup and teardown vis - then ran my test. It now fails (rather than erroring out), because UTF has reset all the inputs/outputs in the setup and teardown... So now my only choice is to (first revert my changes in scc - phew), open each .lvtest file in the external editor (excel) modify the path and save again... Not a great deal of fun! 

It's these little details which really get to me sometimes with LV/NI - it's always 80% of the way there and never 100% and its always us that has to pick up the last 20% at the cost of our own time and productivity (not to mention sanity!). 

Anyway, rant over, at least my tests work now....

[FabiolaDelaCueva]

Hi Paul,

That sounds very frustrating. Would editing directly the .lvtest files via Excel, notepad or even programmatically been faster? and perhaps preserved the inputs/outputs?

It would be good to hear from NI if they are aware of this issue and if they have plans to address it. I will see what I can find out.

Regards,

Fab

[tyk007]

I've hit something similar to this before where I've lost my carefully laid out configuration and expectations in the lvtest file. Its one of my pet peeves with UTF and one of the reasons I stopped using it for anything but the most simple (less than 10 tests) projects. I suspect there are some corner-cases with the automation and you've hit one of them. Luckily you are using source control and can revert the changes to the lvtest files...

[FabiolaDelaCueva]

BTW, don't forget to vote for this idea in the idea exchange:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Easy-Moving-of-Unit-Test-Files/idi-p/2865818

[Deborah_B]

Hi Paul,

Thank you for posting this feedback and the specific workflow where UTF exhibited the reset behavior. I've forwarded this on to our R&D team that manages UTF and will post a reply here shortly. 

With each new release we are striving to deliver software that better considers the job workflow from start to finish, rather than just releasing features that can get a task done. I appreciate this feedback as well.

[Deborah_B]

Hi everyone,

My apologies for the delay here, we are tracking the work to improve this workflow in CAR 702274.