Has anyone ever moved vi.lib to a VOB in clearcase?

[johnoc]

Has anyone ever moved vi.lib to a VOB in clearcase? I would like to place the entire vi.lib directory under source control. Clearcase is the version control system used where I work. Also, a tool that can do this and correct current path information on dependecies in a labview vi that was devloped prior to moving the vi.lib to a VOB? Is this even possible?

[Mark_Yedinak]

I have not used ClearCase with LabVIEW but use SVN extensively. The primary issue you run into is that the SCC system must treat all LabVIEW files as binary files. This means you get a complete copy of the file for every check-in. You should be able to use ClearCase without any major issues.

I do wonder why you are placing vi.lib under source code control though. Given this is LabVIEW's library and they can and do modify it with new releases why do you want to manage their code? You should not be modifying this code directly. If you wanted to make any modifications to it you should always copy the code and modify your own working copy and use that instead of the LabVIEW libraries. Modifying their libraies and managing them can be quite tedious and prone to problems. Not from a SCC control perspective but from a simple code management perspective. You would have to track when and what changes they make to the libraries and decide what things you need to update in your copies.

[SimonH]

I'll second Mark's caution about placing vi.lib under SCC and his advice to create a duplicate working copy if you wish to modify NI shipping code.  We (NI R&D) make the assumption that there are no user edited VIs in the NI directories within vi.lib and that we are safe to modify/rename/delete so long as the VIs in the palettes behave consistently between versions.

Are you hoping to achieve some kind of configuration management system where you can restore previous versions of drivers and addons?  If so tools like VI Package Manager will solve that particular problem.  If there is some other situation you are running into where you think having vi.lib under SCC would be beneficial then please post more so we can discuss.

Regards,

Simon H

LabVIEW Product Manager

[Mark_Yedinak]

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@Simon H wrote:

Are you hoping to achieve some kind of configuration management system where you can restore previous versions of drivers and addons?  If so tools like VI Package Manager will solve that particular problem.

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Using VMs would be another method to keep old environments to go back to. The benefit of this is that is is already configured and ready to go once you run it.

[johnoc]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I agree with you while heartedly. I just ran into some process personnel who wanted me to do this so I thought I would check and see if anyone had dealt with anything like this. The wanted me to lock down the supporting files provided by Labview. I think I will follow my original instincts on this and just lock down my developed files.

Again thank you!

Regards-

John