Virtual Folders for "Build Specification" in the Project Viewer

[alecjcook]

Within the Project Viewer it is possible to create virtual folders in which to help you organise your VIs. Why is this feature not available in the "Build Specifications" area below it.

The main project I am using has 15 different items here, most are grouped (I have a .exe and a .installer for each variant of the software I am creating). It would be nice to group these in folders as my project is getting messy.

Cheers, Alec

[fabric]

I have also been wishing for the same thing! Kudos 🙂

[DutchTzu13]

Same here... Kudos.

[wd8ivl]

Excelent Idea! Kudos!

[stbe]

btw. it's already possible in the plain .lvproj XML-file.

the libraries are displayed, but LV won't allow modification in the Project Explorer ...

[BertMcMahan]

Thanks for the tip stbe, works like a charm. Also, you can drag/drop virtual folders from the rest of the Project manager into the Build specifications area, but ONLY into existing folders. So if you add a folder via stbe's method, you can add subfolders, but not "sibling" folders. One would think this would be a reasonably simple thing to implement since the project supports it anyway, but ah well I suppose it's a pretty low priority feature.

[alexderjuengere]

Could NI make this feature easier to use?

in response to stbe ‎2016-10-11 05:59 PM
[...] but LV won't allow modification in the Project Explorer ...

In LabView x32 2019 SP1 professional,

modifications (change settings in the build) are allowed via Project Explorer
(I tested this with Type="EXE")

However, you can't use the Project Explorer to move another build into a steb-folder

Moreover, you can't change the steb-folder's position in the build-list

Kudos to BertMcMahan.

Which version of LabView did you use?

This should become a Knowledge Base Article.

[alexderjuengere]

Could NI make this feature easier to use?

in response to stbe ‎2016-10-11 05:59 PM
[...] but LV won't allow modification in the Project Explorer ...

In LabView x32 2019 SP1 professional,

modifications (change settings in the build) are allowed via Project Explorer
(I tested this with Type="EXE")

However, you can't use the Project Explorer to move another build into a steb-folder

Moreover, you can't change the steb-folder's position in the build-list

Kudos to BertMcMahan.

Which version of LabView did you use?

This should become a Knowledge Base Article.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> Could NI make this feature easier to use?

NI never made it a feature. Stbe hacked some stuff into the project file that (surprisingly) happens to work in a somewhat usable way. Maybe Stbe can make it easier to use? 🙂

Ok, begin serious now... it's software, so, yes, we almost certainly *can* make it easier to use. We probably won't.

As you can see from the kudos, this is a pretty low-rank idea even after all these years. If I look back at the design documents for the project tree, it was designed for three or four build specs per project. I recall they did an evaluation looking at build specs in other programming environments, including many extremely complex scenarios from around NI, and decided there really wasn't any point in designing for a giant number of configurations. LabVIEW itself, which builds the same source in a whole lot of ways, only needs (5 OSes x 2 operation modes (debug/release) x 3 outputs (EXE, lvrt.dll, and support DLL)) 30 build specifications. I don't even think "Build All" was part of the original design. Getting folders working right in any part of the project tree is a lot of code (all the rules for drag/copy/target are more complicated with aggregators than with project items that represent a thing directly), so my guess is that they cut it as unnecessary.

The lack of folders isn't blocking anyone's development. It is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. The LabVIEW team is adding nice-to-haves in a lot of places, but most of our project experts are over on LabVIEW NXG. LabVIEW NXG is building an entirely new and -- in my opinion -- fundamentally better build system. It's still a work-in-progress, but the design plans make me happy. That does mean, though, that there isn't a lot of bandwidth for those improvements in LabVIEW 20xx.

[stbe]

well, if it didn't work, I would not have posted it 😉

btw., I have moved away from too many build specs in a single project and split up the (unreasonable) huge project into many smaller projects...

this also makes it simpler to maintain and publish updates (since I don't need to rebuild all lvlibps for a simple bugfix that only affected 1 driver)

KR