Synchronizing LabVIEW Development and Deployment Environment

LabVIEW with its graphical approach is suited for engineers used to design and implement systems based on schematics and designs. Being a graphical language, it can be challenging to keep track of drivers, runtime engines, deployments and configurations since most of the tools on the market aimed towards this are implemented for textual languages. Configuration management is possible in the development environment via version control systems such as perforce, however at CERN and in the open source software development community in general, the tendency is moving towards Git. In this paper we demonstrate how the combination of automated builds, packaging, versioning and consistent deployment can further ease and speed up development, while ensure robustness and coherency across systems. We also show how an in-house built tool called "RADE Installer" synchronizes both development environments and drivers across workstations, empowering graphical development at CERN, by merging the open source toolchains with the workflow of LabVIEW. RADE installer represents definitively a solution for LabVIEW to keep track of drivers, runtime engines, deployments and configurations.