Graphical differencing with LabView 8.5 and Perforce SCM

[LesPeters]

I'm in the process of evaluating Perforce SCM software with LabView 8.5 and have noticed some odd behavior using graphical differencing from within the LabView environment.  When comparing two vis where someting internal to a cluster has changed (IE control / indicator added or deleted) no difference is identified. Is this normal?

Also if changes were made to a subvi requiring an upper level vi to have to be resaved LabView indicates the vi has changed but does not identify what the difference is.  I would think that LabView would indicate that the link to the subvi changed?

Anybody else see this or have similiar experiences?  And to any NI folks is this just a limitation to graphical differencing and if so is there any improvement with this area using LabView 8.6.

[BCho]

Hey LesPeters

The two aspects you mentioned are not expected behaviors for graphical differences. However, both of these aspects were 'fixed' in LabVIEW 8.6. In 8.5, the compare vi tool viewed clusters as single objects; so changes within the cluster were not noticed. In 8.6 on the other hand, a lot more detail was added to the compare vi tool and you can now see differences within the cluster. Also in 8.6, if you save changes to a sub-vi and then close the main vi, you will be prompted that changes were made. There is then a link to view the changes. This link takes you to a window that describes that a change has been made to a sub-vi.

So, while you may be experiencing these issues in LabVIEW 8.5, they have been resolved in 8.6. Check out the attached images for some of the detail that 8.6 provides.

Hope this helps,

-Ben