topic Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project in Continuous Integration

The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 23:54:05 GMT

We are pleased to (finally) announce the initial release of the LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project.

Software developers have long understood the benefits continuouse integration provides, including early warning of broken code or conflicting changes, automatic regression testing for all changes, and constant access to a current stable build. But the barrier to entry has been too high for most LabVIEW Developers.

We hope to change that with this project.

The project consists of two components: a web service that allows Jenkins to perform jobs in the LabVIEW space, and a LabVIEW tool to configure those jobs. The former runs on a build server, most likely co-located with your Jenkins server. The latter is installed with LabVIEW on your development machines.

This first release supports three types of jobs:

An initialize job that kicks off the build. You can configure this step to perform source code synchronizations.
A LabVIEW build job that will run any LabVIEW build specification.
A Run VI job that will run a VI.

Your build artifacts are stored in Jenkins, as with any other Jenkins build step.

Both the web service and CI Builder components are extensible frameworks. You can easily add new job types, and we have several in mind, including VI Tester and VI Analyzer jobs.

This project is very much a work in progress. We welcome your complaints, bug reports, and feature requests. We'll take compliments, too.

The source code was written in LabVIEW 2014, but should compile and run in later versions.

You will need to download and install the Launch Remote Actors package, found here: Introducing remote launch for Actors

You will also need to download and install the Configuration Editor Framework (CEF), revision 2.1.1.105 or later, before installing the CI Builder. CEF is available through the LabVIEW Tools Network. In VI Package Manager, search the "All" or "Not Installed" packages lists for "Configuration Editor Framework."

Be sure to download and read the documentation, which includes instructions for installation and configuration.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Oli_Wachno — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 06:59:37 GMT

Thanks for this!

Went through the documentation, haven't installed anything yet, so I'm wondering if this also works with my "cheap setup" where Jenkins is running as a service on my development machine using my VLA license while I'm not using LabVIEW (which happens from time to time... )

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Oli_Wachno — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:17:55 GMT

I came as far as this:

Buld Server.vi gives me an error

Seems the VI can't find Installation\Volume\setup.exe since the subfolder is non existent in the project folder.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 16:36:31 GMT

At a guess, the folder wasn't created due to an access rights issue. Be sure you have write access to the LabVIEW Continuous Integration folder - don't just check to see if the folder is marked read/write, but that your account has full access. It may also be necessary to run LabVIEW as an administrator.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Oli_Wachno — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:50:05 GMT

I have retried, but no change unfortunately.

I have started VIPM explicitely as Admin and kinda opened up the LabVIEW Continouos Integration folder. But it seems, the Installer subdir is not copied. Other subfolders have been created:

Thanks for your support

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:33:49 GMT

The installer subdirectory gets created one level up, in the LabVIEW Continuous Integration folder. It gets created as part of the build process, When I have seen this error on our test installations, it was because I did not have access rights to the LVCI folder. You can set those rights by opening Windows Explorer, navigating to (in this case) the National Instruments folder, right clicking on it, and selecting properties. Go to the Security tab, and see what the access rights are for users.

"Users" should have full control of the folder.

You can bypass all of this by running LabVIEW as an administrator.

We're still struggling with the installer experience. Part of the issue is that, for a lot of reasons, we really do want you to build your own CI Server executable. Hopefully, we'll be able to get to something less fiddly in the future.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Oli_Wachno — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:50:34 GMT

I explicitely started LabVIEW as Admin and here we go.

Now I'm getting another error

But as far as I have found out, there seems to be an issue with my AF in the vi.lib... still investigating

Don't bother about the installer experience! I'm happy to serve as worst case tester

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:57:16 GMT

Oli_Wachno wrote:

Don't bother about the installer experience! I'm happy to serve as worst case tester

And we thank you for that.

More seriously, we can explore moving the LVCI folder somewhere else (other than your application folder), and see how that works. There may be some challenges with making sure everything points to the right place, though.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Oli_Wachno — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 13:31:30 GMT

So... here is my "I am still working on it" message for the day.

I have fixed the Actor Framwork within my vi.lib .... et voila.... the service can be installed successfully

Things I stumbled over:

- Don't use localhost instead of an explicit IP adress when running on the same computer

- if user management has been configured on Jenkins, connecting to it as user annonymus will fail.

What I'm working on:

The test project does run successfully but the artifact handling causes the build to fail eventually.

ERROR: Keine Artefakte gefunden, die mit dem Dateisuchmuster "*" übereinstimmen. Ein Konfigurationsfehler?
ERROR: '*' liefert keine Übereinstimmung.
Build step 'Artefakte archivieren' changed build result to FAILURE
Finished: FAILURE

Sth like: No artifacts found matching pattern "*".

Guess this is still a configuration error on my Jenkins.... I keep searching

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 16:43:03 GMT

Oli_Wachno wrote:

Things I stumbled over:
- Don't use localhost instead of an explicit IP adress when running on the same computer
- if user management has been configured on Jenkins, connecting to it as user annonymus will fail.

That's good feedback, thanks.

What I'm working on:
The test project does run successfully but the artifact handling causes the build to fail eventually.
ERROR: Keine Artefakte gefunden, die mit dem Dateisuchmuster "*" übereinstimmen. Ein Konfigurationsfehler?
ERROR: '*' liefert keine Übereinstimmung.
Build step 'Artefakte archivieren' changed build result to FAILURE
Finished: FAILURE
Sth like: No artifacts found matching pattern "*".

I don't speak German. Google translates this as:

No artifacts found that "*" to match the search string file. A configuration error?

'*' Returns no match.

Is that correct? Do you have full access to the workspace directory?

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Terry_ALE — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 21:11:20 GMT

I think I have followed all the instructions and now I am up to the point where I am trying to build the CI Project (page 9 of the PDF).

Any suggestions/

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 21:24:03 GMT

Did you restart Jenkins, as described on the previous page? Jenkins doesn't see the build scripts right away; a restart is required. The hostname is correct? (It wants an IP address, not "localhost".) Is your Alfred node running (see page 5)?

These are the things that have tripped me up.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Terry_ALE — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 22:05:41 GMT

I did restart Jenkins and hostname is correct (IP address and Port).

I skipped the Alfred node since it was optional, going to do that step now.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 22:08:05 GMT

I think we're learning it's not optional. Brandyn can comment on that when he gets back. (He's OOO this week.)

The documentation will be updated on the next pass.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

scaylor — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 22:34:21 GMT

Do you guys have any guidance on what it would take for me to migrate/port this Project to Bamboo?

We use Bamboo because it links into really nicely with our other development management tools.

I was looking for some direction as I was planning on digging through this project this weekend to find pieces I could use.

Any feedback or guidance was be greatly appreciated.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Terry_ALE — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 23:17:20 GMT

This was going to be my next question, since we use jira/confluence/hipchat, bamboo is what we ultimately will go with!

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Terry_ALE — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 23:17:55 GMT

That worked, though I cannot get Alfred to run as a service, the build worked! Thanks.

I'd say Alfred is definitely required.

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

justACS — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 23:40:58 GMT

We haven't looked closely at Bamboo, as most of the experience in the ASE group at NI is with Jenkins (we like free tools as much as the next guy).

That said, will Bamboo talk to a web service? If so, then it should be able to use the CI Server. You would not have the CI Project Builder, though, as it invokes Jenkins builds scripts.

If there is an equivalent capability in Bamboo, the project builder could be modified to support it. That tool is going to get a rework at some point, at which time, I will see what we can do to parameterize build script invocation.

Can the Bamboo users weigh in?

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Oli_Wachno — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 05:10:40 GMT

niACS schrieb:

I think we're learning it's not optional. Brandyn can comment on that when he gets back. (He's OOO this week.)
The documentation will be updated on the next pass.

Once the job is created on Jenkins (and you get above error) you can modify it to run on a different node.

USed to have the same issue, since Alfred would not start on my Jenkins

Re: The LabVIEW Continuous Integration Project

Terry_ALE — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 05:17:15 GMT

What Source Code Control did you guys use for this?

Having a hard time with SVN, would be good to get more insight into configuring SCC.

I've tried most combinations I could think of, must be missing something obvious.