Continuous Integration - The SAS Workshops Blog

Build License Track

Matthias from Studio Bods, recently presented at our Mastermind Group on his tool that allows you to Build, License, and Track (BLT) your LabVIEW programs.

Continuous Integration , Unit Testing

What a crossword puzzle can teach us about programming

I enjoy doing the USA Today Crossword puzzle every day. It’s fun and I like to think it keeps me sharp. It’s also free. If you google it, you’ll find it rather quickly. This particular crossword puzzle has 2 modes: expert and casual. In expert mode, there

Continuous Integration , How to

More GitLab Runner Troubleshooting Tips

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Continuous Integration and using GitLab Runner. It’s really nice when it works and it works 90% of the time, but issues do pop up occasionally. They can be a pain to troubleshoot. I previously wrote about how to run GitLabRunner as

Continuous Integration , How to , SCC

Checking for New GitLab Releases

In my previous posts, I talked about automatic versioning and automatically creating releases. The next step is to create auto-updating code. By auto-updating I don’t mean code that automatically updates behind your user’s back ala Windows 10. You can do that if you want, but I believe the

Continuous Integration , How to , SCC

Automating Gitlab Releases

My previous post talked about versioning. I thought I would add to that discussion by talking about how I do releases and how I setup auto-updating in my apps, using the GitLab Package Repository. This a new feature I’ve started adding lately, so it’s still a work in

Continuous Integration , How to , SCC

Automatic Versioning

At the GLA Summit recently minted LabVIEW Champion Felipe Pinheiro Silva gave a 7×7 on versioning. It was interesting. Be sure to take a few minutes and watch it when the video is released. I do things slightly differently. I learned my method from another LabVIEW Champion, Stefan Lemmens.

Continuous Integration , How to

Trouble Shooting GitLabCI

I saw a post recently on LinkedIn by Jim Kring. He had some issues with a build hanging unexpectedly. They were running Jenkins under a system account and therefore it was really hard to see what was going on to be able to troubleshoot it. Jim then linked to a

How to , Continuous Integration , Legacy Code

Quick VI Analyzer

I haven’t talked a whole lot about VI Analyzer yet. It’s a static code analysis tool. If you come from text-based background, it is similar to a linter. It checks your code against a set of predefined rules and reports back any violations. You do need LabVIEW professional

Continuous Integration , How to

GitLab CI and Git Bash

A while back GitLab CI deprecated the batch executor for Windows runners. That meant that you could no longer directly call batch scripts from a Gitlab Runner. They had switched over to Powershell. There were workarounds. You could still write a batch script and call it from PowerShell using cmd.

Unit Testing , How to , Continuous Integration

Unit Tests for PPLs

So in my Unit Testing Workshop, I talk about taking tests written for libraries and retargetting them to the PPL once the library is built into PLLs. The last time I taught the workshop, someone asked me for an example. I didn’t have a good example to share, so

Continuous Integration , SCC

Continuous Integration vs Feature Branches

After reading the Continuous Delivery Book, I have been thinking a lot about branching strategies and Continuous Integration versus Feature Branching. I put together this little chart of the pros and cons of each. Feature BranchingContinuous IntegrationTrustDoes not require trust. You can control via GitLab who can merge into main

SCC , Continuous Integration

Fowler's Branching Patterns

Martin Fowler is prolific writer about software development. One of his more well-known books is probably Refactoring. He also has a blog with lots of good content. After reading the Continuous Delivery book and working on my Using Git Effectively course, I have been thinking a lot about branching strategies.

Continuous Integration , SCC , How to , OOP

Branch by Abstraction

In the past I have been a big fan of Git Flow. I still am, but I recently read the book Continuous Delivery and it has me rethinking some things. In particular they talk about Continuous Integration and not using feature branches, which is a very large component of Git

Book Reviews , Continuous Integration

Continuous Delivery

A year or two ago, I was talking to Nancy about my interest in Continuous Integration (CI). She put me onto this book called Continuous Delivery (CD). It’s a little dated. The technologies have changed but all the principles still apply. If you are interesting in learnig more about

Continuous Integration , Software tools , DevOps

What is Docker?

I recently posted a book review for a book about learning Docker. I immediately got some feedback that I did not do a great job of explaining exactly what Docker is. This post is going to be a brief explanation of exactly what Docker is and particularly how it compares

Book Reviews , Continuous Integration , DevOps

Docker in Action

Note: for more on Docker itself, see here. Chris Stryker has recently put a lot of effort into getting LabVIEW to run inside of a Docker Container. This is really exciting news. I think this is really a huge step forward in improving Continuous Integration (CI) with LabVIEW. It offers

Continuous Integration , Unit Testing

Continuous Integration and Unit Testing

If you saw my presentation at GDevCon 2, you’ll know that Test Driven Development is about more than just writing unit tests. It’s about the whole development process. However, after each development iteration, you do end up with a bunch of tests. Why not integrate them into your

Continuous Integration , Webinars

August 2019 Webinar

Basic Continuous Integration with GitLab and LabVIEW – 8/28 at 11am MT How do I make sure my unit tests get run regularly? Maybe you have unit tests, vi analyzer tests, and a build process in place but how often do you actually run them? What if one action that

Continuous Integration

The benefits of Continuous Integration

In a previous post, I talked about various ways to earn technical interest. One of those ways was Continuous Integration or CI. I thought I would elaborate a little on the benefits of using CI to automate the boring stuff so you can detect problems early, streamline your process, and

Continuous Integration , Unit Testing

Six Easy Ways To Earn Technical Interest

Steve Watts recently made a excellent blogpost about Technical Accounting. If you don’t follow Steve’s blog you definitely should. In this particular article, he coined the terms Technical Debt, Technical Investments, Technical Assets, and Technical Tax. Steve’s talk of Technical Investments, got me thinking about Technical Interest.