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There should be functions in LabVIEW (RT, FPGA) to read:
- FPGA build version (from LabVIEW FPGA, LabVIEW RT or normal LabVIEW)
- RT build version (from LabVIEW RT and normal LabVIEW)
- EXE build version (from normal LabVIEW)
!!!
I discovered the need for this when the bitfile saved in flash memory for immediate use by the FPGA and the bitfile referenced by the "Open FPGA VI Reference" got out of sync on a cRIO so that the cRIO's FPGA started running with a new desired behavior and then reverted to an old undesired behavior about a minute later as the RT system finally go to the point where it shoved into the FPGA its stale copy of a bitfile. There was no warning from the project that this mismatch was in place and this was even after doing a check for differences between the project and system and finding none.
I learned from this that the "download" right-click context menu option under the FPGA bitfile build option does not do anything useful and instead the RT App needs to be rebuilt and redeployed whenever the bitfile changes if it uses the "Open FPGA VI Reference" VI. The "Open Dynamic Bitfile Reference" may be a bit more forgiving in this respect in that its documentation says that it will only download and start a bitfile if it finds that the FPGA is not already running one.
But in the end, NI really needs to provide a way to tell from the project and within a program if the RT copy and flash-memory copy of the bitfiles differ.
I too would like this feature. It seems odd that it is not already there.
We have spent a number of days investigating a problem only to find that someone had deployed a different version of the FPGA onto our RT PXI Chassis. And as we all know, time is money.
Upon contacting NI support, the response was:
"..... Your only option would be to hardcode a build version into the code every time you create a new build. As this seems like a useful feature, I would recommend adding to the thread on NI.com that already exists on this topic. The Idea Exchange area of the forums is a way to communicate directly with R&D to give them feedback and suggest new features"
Which as a work around isn't brilliant, but at least you can see how that would work.
Can someone from NI R&D comment on this as a year and a half of silence isn't brilliant?
Me too, I believe that it is very useful (and often recommended) to retrieve the FPGA bitfile (compilation) version. Ideally, we should "stamp" the TDMS files for (automatically) tracking the history of measurements, when during a campaign several FPGAs were used (bug fixes, new oprions, etc).
At a minimum, NI should add the ability to call a Pre- and Post-build VI where we could then increment a dummy numeric indicator at every build and make it the poor-man's build version number.
I'd also like to be able to either access this on FPGA, or use Pre-Build VIs.
It seems like some modifications to VIs in <LabVIEW>\resource\Framework\Providers\Builds\Fpga\FpgaCompilation might allow a pre-build VI, but unfortunately these are all (well, the ones I checked) locked.
I'm not surprised they're locked, but perhaps someone at NI could add Pre-Build VIs and then we could all be happy? 🙂
