Project Providers Documentation

[Taggart]

Do we have a GUID for LV Interfaces?

[flarn2006]

Looks like it's the same as the one for a class: {EFD740D6-F254-4BBC-5675-8858F35B820E}

Also, for anyone wondering, the GUID for XNodes is {35CAD751-77A8-4D0F-BF61-85A48475F6A5}.

[wiebe@CARYA]

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@flarn2006 wrote:

Also, for anyone wondering, the GUID for XNodes is {35CAD751-77A8-4D0F-BF61-85A48475F6A5}.

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No need to wonder. It's in the list: ProjectItem - LabVIEW Wiki

[Elijah_K]

I had several discussions at GDevCon this week in Germany about PPF and its future. One suggestion I wanted to share here was that we move the documentation at the top of this thread to the LabVIEW Wiki.

The reasoning is because it sounds like a lot of folks have invested significant time and energy in creating their own documentation for how to use PPF. The ambition is that we could combine and consolidate that insights most easily on the Wiki.  Thoughts?

[IlluminatedG]

There's still a bunch of info that would be helpful from R&D to flesh out some of the "it's been figured out and mostly works" parts of it. Moving to the wiki before docs are cleaned up and fleshed out more would seem to me like washing hands of it. Is there that much more that people have figured out that isn't in all the original docs? What commitments can y'all make to contributing to it?

A bit of polish and fleshing out would make me happier regardless of the location.

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Project Providers are one of the most useful hooks available to the community. Anything that can be done to improve the Developer Experience would be appreciated. Thanks.

[wiebe@CARYA]

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@Petru_Tarabuta wrote:

Anything that can be done to improve the Developer Experience would be appreciated. Thanks.

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I wander how hard it would be to make a 'proxy' provider. It's been a while since I used the ppf.

Provide the developer with a parent class, and inherit from it to implement new behavior.

This doesn't mean we wouldn't need low level documentation, in fact, we'd need low level and high level documentation.

Ideally, there would be a way to add and modify the plug-ins without reloading LabVIEW. 

From there, the sky is the limit. There could be (unit) test frameworks, tools for simulation, UIs for installing, enabling\disabling, pausing, restarting plug ins, etc.

Just a thought.

[wiebe@CARYA]

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@Elijah_K wrote:

The ambition is that we could combine and consolidate that insights most easily on the Wiki.  Thoughts?

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The wiki would be great for concluding documentation.

The wiki isn't great (AFAIK & IMO) for discussing current\future development.

This is actually good: adding documentation to existing techniques and new developing can be done in parallel because they're decoupled. 

[TheQ]

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wiebe@CARYA wrote:
The wiki isn't great (AFAIK & IMO) for discussing current\future development.

Each Wiki page can have a “Discussion” page. You can see at the top of each page as the Discussion tab. However, this should be used for discussion on the page contents (i.e. how to layout the content, improve diagrams, give better explanations, or provide tutorial steps).

Discussion on development of the feature itself should be done elsewhere. I suggest Discord or the NI Forums. The G Idea Exchange is a good option too. Depends if you want live/immediate conversations then Discord is better. If you want slower but more topic centered and structured conversations then G Idea Exchange or Forums are better. (IMO)

[TheQ]

FYI. Here is the current PPF page on the LabVIEW Wiki:

https://labviewwiki.org/wiki/Project_Provider_Framework