Automatically Save FPGA Socket CLIP with LabVIEW Project

[Kevin_Hooper]

In LabVIEW 2014, sbRIO-9651 projects need a FPGA socket CLIP to be selected.

This FPGA socket CLIP can be user defined to select aspects like available FPGA pins.

By default, a user defined FPGA socket CLIP is saved in the National Instruments installation folder

or in the National Instruments user date folder. In other words, these FPGA socket CLIPs are not

saved with your LabVIEW project. This means you can forget to keep them by putting them under
configuration control (happened to me when my PC hard disk was changed) and other users will

not be able to use your LabVIEW project if you forget to provide the FPGA socket CLIP used
(happened to me when sharing my projects with NI engineers).

My suggestion is default behaviour of the CLIP generator should be changed.

This tool is used to select or create a sbRIO-9651 FPGA socket CLIP when creating a LabVIEW project.

I propose this tool should always save the created/selected CLIP under the project folder.

This would help to ensure the LabVIEW project contains everything associated with the project.

Optionally, it would helpful if the LabVIEW project dependencies showed FPGA CLIP usage.

I have unknowingly had a project using another's projects CLIP (especially when the CLIPs have

the same name).

[Eamon_White]

You raise a good point. I can see the value, from a project portability standpoint, in having the CLIP files saved relative to the project although it might make situations where you actually want to share a clip between two projects more complicated. Using the same clip in multiple projects might be less common though.

Eamon

[jbeale1]

I am using LV2015 (previously on 2014) with sbRIO-9651. The current CLIP file situation is difficult for me to manage when working with several different physical computers, all of which need to get the latest code from an external source control system. Whenever the CLIP file has to change there is a lot of confusion, and it is not obvious to me how I am able to determine which CLIP file is currently being used. Is it true the full pathname of the CLIP file currently in use is not available from the Project Explorer?  How are people making this work?  If the CLIP file is a required element of a project, why is it not treated the same way as the other elements (.vi files, etc.) ?