Are there utiilities that will help manage LV code changes?

[MinerHokieRamp]

I'm working on projects where I'm maintaining and improving VIs which were built with LV 5.1 and we'll be migrating to 7.1 in the future. Part of the code change process is to describe, in an MS Office document, details of every change to each VI. For some changes that are too detailed to describe with text, I make screenshots, paste them into PowerPoint (PPT), annotate the PPT drawing, then insert the PPT file as an object into the change description document. This process, as you might guess, is prone to human error.

Does NI (or a 3rd party) produce a utility that will compare all differences (including VI Info and Revision, but not including repositioning of wires whose connections didn't change) between two selected VIs and produce a "diff" document, either graphic-based or text-based?

Thanks,

Jeffrey Bledsoe

[Dennis_Knutson]

The only diff tool that exists is one that comes with the professional version of LabVIEW. It does compare the things you want but does not create a document that lists them. For each difference found, you can choose to show the details with the differences circled, but I don't know of a way to save them except by doing a screen capture. Also, because LabVIEW cannot load into memory two different VIs of the same name, the old or new version would have to be renamed at least temporarily before you can use the diff tool.

[altenbach]

If you have LabVIEW Professional or higher, there is a tool to compare VIs and highlite the differences. Optionally, it can ignore cosmetic changes. However, there is no easy way to output the changes to a file (AFAIK, a screen capture seems to be the only way to record the canges).

Another useful way is to record a more detailed revision history whenever a VI is edited and saved. Go to "tools..options...revision history" and check all boxes. Make it a habit to write a detailed log of changes before each save. Later you could write a VI that goes through all your files and extracts the revision history (property is "History:Entire Text") for your report.