Add Free Label to already running VI

[Neil.Pate]

Very often during debugging, you have probes placed all over the block diagram checking wire contents. It would be really convenient if during Run Time we could place more Free Labels, as this would allow a developer to place comments during debugging/running, otherwise you have to stop the VI and then try and remember all the comments (assuming you have not written them down).

Note: I do not know of any other languages that allow you to do this, as you are essentially changing the source on the fly, so I don't think this is a trivial change! (But LabVIEW is better than other languages anyway )

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Actually, most programming languages would let you do this. The only other IDE that I know that restricts this is Visual Studio when editing C# code. Most programming languages would let you change the code itself as it is running -- the text files being completely independent of the code that is executing. It would be as if the execution highlights continued to run on the wires as they were when the VI started running.

[altenbach]

Interesting idea. Maybe it should not be the same as free labels, but some temporary debugging notes (e.g. faint red background) that can later be individually dismissed, hidden, or deleted all at once when finalizing the code.

"sometimes the value here is <0, need to look into that"

"looks like the wrong case is set to default"

"This shift register should actually be initialized"

"I think there is still a race condition in this general area, need to investigate more"

How about something like virtual sticky notes? These notes should not e.g. part of the regular diagram, because they might overlap with code, etc.

[Neil.Pate]

altenbach, that is pretty much exactly what I am after! They would definitely be non-permanent. Perhaps only being saved if explicitly done by the developer.

I figured they could somehow be associated with blocks of code, so a floating sticky or something would be great. And then the ability to iterate over them from the IDE when actually editing. This would be very cool I think.

AQ: I suppose I am so used to LV I just assumed the other langs couldn't do it either 😉

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> They would definitely be non-permanent. Perhaps only being saved if explicitly done by the developer.

Hm... that suggests they behave more like probes. We draw the little bubbles on the wires when a probe is present. We could annotate the diagram the same way, and then commit those comments as permanent free labels when you save the VI (assuming the VI is idle and the diagram is editable -- which should be always because it isn't safe to save a VI that is still running, but there's one known CAR showing a way to call Save while a VI is still running... we've been trying to close all those back doors but at least one still exists).

[InfiniteNothing]

I was just about to submit this idea myself. I want the comments to be permanent just like the normal light yellow comments, that way I could do my general documentation while waiting for my code to do its thing.

[NathanJD]

I agree with InfiniteNothing, there's no reason to add a new 'type' of comment/free label when you can simply delete the comment if no longer needed.  This way, if you need to stop working on the VI in the middle of fixing the issues determined during execution, you won't have to re-do all the debugging.