Saving current FPGA bitfile name into text file for version history

[Paul_-B]

Hello,

I'm wondering if there is any way to output the name of the compiled bitfile that is running on the FGPA and save that into a text file?

We have multiple people working on a similar LabVIEW project that is pretty consistently being updated.

For our purposes we need to know which bitfile is in use when data is being collected and we want to be able to save the bitfile name into the same text file that our data currently saves into, in case we need to refer back to this in the future.

[santo_13]

The only robust method is to load a known bitx file before you collect data, log this bitx file name with some sort of source code commit or version number so you can still trace it back.

The issue is how would you know the functionality did not change though the bitx file name is the same?

[rolfk]

Instead of everyone letting deploy his own bitfile you might rather want your application to explicitly load the correct bitfile. The CompactRIO driver has functions that take the file name of a particular bitfile to load instead of just opening whatever is the currently deployed bitfile. Add the requirement to have each bitfile have a string control on its frontpanel that is initialized to some version information. Read it after loading the bitfile and use the bitfile name and version information to log with your data.

Enforce proper version management including source code control AND updating the version string at every modification. Violators have to bring a cake for all to enjoy or something similar. You can’t do consistent version reporting if not everyone follows the rules!