provide better platform for instrument drivers and other 3rd party vi's (history, diffs, branch,etc)

[Arun_Persaud]

Hi

it would be great if there would be a better platform for 3rd party VIs, for example instrument drivers. Something that allows you to see when the last updates where done, what has been changed (browse the code) and also something that would allow you to branch from the existing code, add changes and sent a pull request back in a way that other people can see that the VI has been branched, so that they don't need to duplicate their effort.Including an issue tracker with this would also be great.

This in my view provides faster turnaround for fixing bugs and adding new features. I had to fix a few bugs in some drivers, emailed the VI back to NI and since then nothing has happened to the driver at the least the last few times I checked and there is not a good way of tracking this. The idea is not new and there are lots of platforms like this around in the open source world. Here are some examples:

github http://github.com (version controlled history, branching, merging, issue tracker, per project wiki)

bitbucket http://bitbucket.org/ (similar to github)

Lots of linux distributions manage their source code this way:

OpenSUSE build server: http://build.opensuse.com (version controlled history, branching, merging)

Launchpad https://launchpad.net/ (version controlled history, branching, merging, issue tracker, code review, translation)

and there are plenty of other sites.

[Albert.Geven]

The turnaround time is indeed too long but much faster than several years ago.

Also version information is present today.

And maybe a comment section could already help out. Something as is present on other pages like at the bottom of

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/4F811A9B23F1D46E862566F700615B7A

[gagi1]

Thank you both for the feedback. The lack of comment section on each instrument driver page is a known bug which should be addressed in the future. As Albert mentioned, we do display driver version information on each driver download page, and each certified LabVIEW driver does have the revision history - older drivers store this information in the Revision History VI and the project-style drivers include it in a Readme file. Our plan is to make revision information more accessible on the driver download page in the future.

We welcome feedback on instrument drivers and encourage users to contact us at instrument.drivers@ni.com with any instrument driver development questions they might have. The turnaround time for reviewing and uploading an updated driver is less than a week. Arun, please submit your updated VIs directly to us and we’ll make sure they get posted on IDNet.

[Arun_Persaud]

Having the latest readme/changelog on the driver download page would be a big plus, so that you don't need to download and unzip everytime.  The webpage should also include a link for bug reports and patches. I guess if your turnaround time is below a week, then it doesn't make sense to have a list of known issues on the webpage 😉

It would be also great, if there is an option to be informed about updates on drivers that you use... for example having the changelog as RSS feed would be great, than I would just subscirbe to all my drivers and know when to update.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 2 kudos within 2 years after posting will be automatically declined.