Make it possible to copy files & virtual folders to other targets in the project

[Mads]

In short:

It should be possible to copy items between targets in the project window. This should be possible with right-click copy option, Ctrl+C/V - AND by Ctrl+Drag&Drop.

Background:

If you have multiple targets in the same project and you wish to have some VIs, virtual folders or other resources available under each of these targets (not just to keep things available and tidy, but to avoid recompilation) you cannot just copy them from the reference under a different target. You either have to MOVE them (not what you want to do) or add them again. And and in the case of virtual folders this can be a substantial repetition of work...

[Thoric]

I must be missing something, because if I use drag and drop and hold down CTRL, I can copy my virtual folders to as many targets as I want. Only build specifications fails to copy (LV 2011 SP2).

[Mads]

You are correct that virtual folders are possible to drag & drop. There is no Copy/Paste menu option, but drag & drop is there yes.

The idea should have said "auto-populating folders" - those are namely not possible to drag & drop-copy.

Build specifications are slightly different for RT targets than PC targets so I can understand that those are not possible to drag & drop, although a conversion that keeps the compatible parts could be an option to allow that as well.

[Thoric]

Ahh. I rarely use auto-populating folders, so I've not come across that limitation before. If you convert an auto-pop to virtual, that should allow you to copy it (and it's contents) to wherever you need it, after which you can revert it to auto-pop again. In any case, I'll Kudo this

[Dave_Thomson]

   I would agree that being able to copy all folders (including auto-populating) would be good. The CNTR-Drag is good to know for virtual folders. But the above was written for LV2012, and as of LV2015, the behavior is still the same for auto-populating folders. So I'll leave a Kudo.

    But the actual reason I came across this was because I was looking for a suggestion for allowing Build Spec's to be copied across targets. I've got a program with a LOT of plug-ins. Each plug-in needs its own script, mostly due to the fact that each deployment is customized and only includes a subset of all functionality. I've recently converted the whole program to work in RT. But now whenever I add a new target, there is a lot of tedious, error prone manual work to create the build scripts.

[Mads]

Complex build specs are a nightmare to recreate for each target, it should be possible to use an existing one as the basis for a spec for a new target.😡

I just had another case where I needed to recreated a huge build spec for a cRIO-9053 where I already had one for cRIO-9063, and it seems I found a solution that kind of illustrates how simple this could be if only NI at least added some support for this where the targets as so similar;

I just opened the project file in a text editor, copied the full item-description of the 9063 target, changed the hardware target property, the target name, and updated all the references in the build spec section to 9053 instead of 9063...and voila - it build and runs on the 9053.🤔😃