Revision control with mixed versions of LabVIEW development

[WSmith]

I'm using Subversion with TortoiseSVN on Windows and I'm finally getting around to upgrading to LabVIEW 2009 from version 8.6. I had a general question regarding revision control and developing code with multiple versions of LabVIEW. Is it best to create a separate repository for each version of LabVIEW that we do development with or rather to use the same repository and create separate folders (i.e. create a new branch for LabVIEW 2009 development). Of course, I would need to copy everything into the new branch and do a Mass Compile.

The only reason I thought to create a new repository is that I don't want any developers to accidentally recompile any VI's in a new version of LabVIEW that an older version of LabVIEW would try to load. The alternative is to keep all the code in the same repository and create a new "Branch" as a new separate trunk for development with the latest version of LabVIEW. I call it a new trunk because the new branch that is being developed with the latest version of LabVIEW can never be merged back to the original code base that was developed with an older version of LabVIEW and it would not be able to load the VI's recompiled by a new version of LabVIEW.

Thanks

[Mark_Yedinak]

From a pure source code control perspective the best way would be to create a branch for each version. This does give you the ability to see exactly where the branch occurred and what code was the base for the branch. I would avoid simply creating a new folder and making a copy. This really isn't any form of source code control. Creating a separate repository isn't much better than copying the code to a new folder.

[WSmith]

My initial guess was that branching is the think to do, so thanks for the sanity check.  In fact, I have already migrated to LabVIEW 2009 and  everything is working nicely.  Now if we could get NI to stop LabVIEW from recompiling code if the file location of the VI changes on the disk everything will be alright.

When I mentioned creating a new folder and copying, I really meant creating a branch which essentially what you get.  The nice thing is that a copy in Subversion is not really a copy but rather what they call a "cheap copy" and it does not take up additional disk space.  

I love subversion!

Thanks for help.

[Oskar_Bosch]

Have you considered looking into labview 2010?

That version can separate compiled code and save it outside the vi file.

Should be much better for source code control.