Configuration management in TestStand

[JayCeeBee]

Our department in the company does software V&V in embedded systems. Our next project is large, complex and contains possibly thousands of requirements. We want to use TestStand to create automated tests to test the requirements. I, the "TestStand developer", have been working hard on customizing TestStand to fit our needs. We will have possibly 4-6 more TestStand/PXI stations that technicians will use to write test sequences and run tests with sequence editor. I need all of these test station configurations to be EXACTLY the same. I also need an easy way to distribute a configuration change (for example, change to on the fly report generation or begin logging to a database) to all test stations. Does anyone have experience with this???

My initial thought was to keep all of the files in the TestStand 3.1\Cfg and TestStand 3.1\Components\User directories under source control. This way, if I want to change a configuration in TestStand all I have to do is check out the appropriate file, make my changes, and check it back in.

The technician writing test sequences can then get the latest versions of all of the files before testing, if needed. Also- the set of configuration files used for testing can be "labeled", this will provide good traceability to the TestStand configurations that were used when testing.

However, I am not sure if this will work for the .ini files located in the TestStand 3.1\Cfg. Will TestStand get "mad" if these .ini files are always read only (checked in)???

Please let me know how people have done this in the past.

Thanks!

Jared

[Scott_Richardson]

Jared -
Are you willing to allow the configuration files be write only on the system by instructing the SCC to pull them down this way?

[JayCeeBee]

Scott,

Could you please clarify? I am not sure what you are saying.

Thanks,

Jared

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

TestStand does throw up some warning dialogs to let you know that it couldn't update files like testexec.ini, TestStandPersistedOptions.opt. And it also complains when it tries to update the other file within the cfg folder when you shut TestStand down. But it does run ok.

Regards
Ray Farmer

[Scott_Richardson]

Jared -
Typically when you retrieve a file from SCC, it is read-only. Some SCC providers allow you to specify that a file is writable instead when retrieved. You typically change an attributes on the file in SCC to do this.

[pwaszkewitz]

Quite an old thread, but I like to revive it because I am having the exact same problem. TestStand runs OK with write-protected configuration files (and I like them that way since we have 6 interconnected machines, one running an Operator Interface, all the others running RemoteEngines, but theoretically you could edit the configuration on any of them and I want to keep that under control), but it does display the "Access Denied" dialog in the beginning.

Is there a way to prevent that dialog from appearing at all, throughout the software? It is not a problem for a developer using the Sequence Editor but it should not appear on a target system which is supposed to startup automatically.

Regards

Peter