Can I be notified when FPGA compilation finishes?

[PGH]

Hi all,

As the Labview FPGA users know, the FPGA compilation process is very slow.  (This is not necessarily NI or Xylinx's fault; as far as I know all FPGA compilers are slow.)

Question: can I set things up so that I get a beeping or an instant message, or an email when the compilation is finished?

Or maybe I should just go out and get a kitchen timer?  I know my project usually take 50 minutes to be "done".  But then I might waste <50 minutes if the compilation aborts prematurely.

Sincerely,

Peter Halverson

[MattP]

Hello Peter,

FPGA compiles do indeed take quite some time, though this is true of all FPGA compilers.  Currently, I'm not aware of a built-in method of the LabVIEW Compile Server that will notify you via email or instant message that the compile has completed or aborted, but this is exactly the kind of feedback we like to hear for future releases.  I'd recommend letting our R & D department know directly that this feature would help you by filling out Product Feedback at www.ni.com/contact.  Many of our new features come directly from suggestions by users like you, so if you run into any more areas that could use improvement, please let us know! 

[jdigiova]

You can create a LabVIEW program to run on the machine that is compiling and monitor the running processes.  Attached is one solution.  Here are some caveats:

1) It will only work on Windows XP (it relies on a program called tasklist.exe)

2) It relies on the fact that xflow.exe is the process that does the compiling (this may not be true forever).

Regards,

Joseph D.

National Instruments