Software tools - 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.

Sam On Joel , Software tools

So here is another article inspired by Joel on Software. In this article, titled The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!), Joel talks about the importance of understanding Unicode and character sets. It is a bit of a rant (Joel

Software tools , Frameworks , OOP

Rename AF Message

I inherited a project written using Actor Framework recently. I started to do a little refactoring to make it easier to add some of the changes I needed to make, following Kent Beck’s idea of “First make the change easy, then make the easy change.” What is in a

Software tools , Linux

TLDR

I’ve been doing a bit of Linux work lately, and I’ve stumbled upon this thing called TLDR, so I thought I would share it here. Manpages If you do much Linux work, one of the first things you should have learned about was manpages. This is the Linux

SCC , How to , Software tools

A Better Way To Set Up LVCompare and LVMerge

I have previously written about setting up LVCompare and LVMerge. I ran into a situation where for whatever reason that solution stopped working for me. I would launch LVMerge or LVCompare and nothing would happen. I tried some troubleshooting and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. In

How to , Linux , Software tools , CRIO

CRIO Tips: Setting up VNC

This a follow on article to a couple previous articles: here and here. Its part of a series of tips that Neil Crossan provided me with, dealing with cRIOs and Linux RT targets. He saw a post of mine and sent me a bunch of tips and tricks. I thought

SCC , Software tools

LazyGit

In a previous post, I mentioned lazygit in passing. It’s a nice CLI replacement for some of the Git GUI tools like SourceTree. It’s not too well known so I decided to do a little write-up on it. What LazyGit has over something like SourceTree is that is

How to , CRIO , Software tools

How to create a cRIO Virtual Machine

Just a week or two ago I stumbled upon a forum post that outlined how to create cRIO Virtual Machine. I’ve written a little bit about Virtual Machines before. Creating a virtual cRIO was pretty straightforward, but it required piecing together several responses in the thread, particularly since I

Webinars , How to , Software tools

February 2021 Webinar

LabVIEW Shortcuts – Don’t waste time wiring… February 24th, 10:00am MT We are fortunate to have Stefan Lemmens join us in February. He is going to give a presentation on all the various types of LabVIEW Shortcuts. We are always looking for ways to be more efficient. These tips

Software tools , Linux , Resources

Zsh

Oh My ZSH If you follow this blog, you will know that I am a huge fan of the Maintainable podcast by Robby Russell. It contains lots of great information about working with Legacy Code and how to write code so that you avoid a lot of the issues with

How to , Software tools

Getting Started with 3-D Printing

I did a job a few years ago for a mining company. We were building a tester to test soil samples. I was amazed that many of the parts for the tester were 3-d printed. I thought it was pretty cool technology. At the time I thought it could be

Unit Testing , Software tools , RT

Unit Testing on Real Time Targets

I’ve written a lot previously on unit testing and the value of unit tests. I try very hard to write unit tests for all my software and i try to use Test Driven Development (TDD) as much as I can. It’s not always easy. I just started a

Software tools

Don't Waste Time Manually Writing Documentation

We all know documentation is important. Our software will likely need to be updated and upgraded at some point, oftentimes by another person who is unfamiliar with it. Even if we are the ones doing the updates we may not remember all the important details. That is why documentation is

Software tools

Camtasia

I have been working on putting together some prerecorded online classes. I have been using Camtasia and Snagit a lot lately, so I thought I would do a quick writeup on them. I first discovered these tools when doing some videos for NI. That is what they had recommended for

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

How to , Software tools

Enhanced State Diagram Editor

I was talking to Fab a while ago and she put me onto the Enhanced State Diagram editor. Apparently it is one of Jeff K’s pet projects. It is a way to create a state machine by drawing the diagram in a special editor that automatically generates the LabVIEW

SCC , Software tools , How to

Git Tips For Beginners

Git is a great source code control tool, but it is not known for being user friendly. It’s actually a shame. The way in which git stores and references content is incredibly elegant, but it’s UI seems more of an afterthought. The command structure is not at all

Software tools , Resources

TDMS Headers

Our TDMS Headers has officially been published to the NI Tools Network. It makes it easier to read and write cluster of data as properties for tdms files. Simply pass it a cluster and it does the rest. Check it out on the NI Tools Network Check it out the

SCC , Software tools

Gitflow the easy way

You may have heard of Gitflow. It was first proposed here nearly 10 years ago. If you are like me, when I first saw it, I was a little overwhelmed. I certainly got the idea of making use of git’s powerful branching model, and not simply developing in master.

How to , Software tools , Unit Testing

Caraya Review

Caraya is a popular Unit Testing solution from JKI. Compared to JKI VI Tester, Caraya seems to be newer and better supported. In fact while conducting this review I found a small bug. I reported it and it was fixed within 24 hours. The Caraya paradigm is different from the

How to , Software tools , Unit Testing

Insta Coverage

I first heard about InstaCoverage at NI Week 2018. I was part of a panel discussing Unit Testing. Peter Bokor gave a brief presentation right before the panel started on a new unit testing tool IncQuiry Labs had created called InstaCoverage. He really emphasized the code coverage calculation. This is

How to , Software tools , Unit Testing

AST Unit Tester Review

I recently did a review of JKI VI Tester. While it is my goto unit testing tool, there are several issues with it: * You have to be an admin to install it. * It adds a ton of dependencies to your project. * If you have a project that has tests in

How to , Software tools , Unit Testing

Using JKI VI Tester

If you have been following my posts, you will know that I am a big fan of JKI VITester. It is my goto Unit Tester. Why? Mostly because it is an implementation of xUnitStyle testing, which means that I can easily use all of the great patterns outlined in xUnit

Software tools , Frameworks , OOP

Events for UI Actor Indicators

Allen Smith and I have been working on a side project we called Events for UI Actor Indicators for a couple months (we’ve both been busy lately). It started with a discussion at a CLA summit in Austin. That prompted Allen to come up with an idea and then

Software tools

How to use VIPM effectively

My friend Matt Richardson recently suggested I write a post about how I use packages in my workflow, particularly how I use VIPM. This is my response. Matt, hopefully I answered all your questions. What is VIPM? VIPM stands for VI package manager. It is a free tool made by