What is the Issue Tracker?

The Issue Tracker is a vital component of Bolder Software Employees, Subcontractors, and Customers should understand it's intent:

• How we get paid - Bolder Software is primarily a service oriented company. As such, we invoice our customers based on the amount of billable hours we work. The Issue Tracker helps us to manage all of our employee and subcontractor hours so that we may create accurate invoices, and collect on them in a timely manner.

• How you get paid - The Issue Tracker is also how we create paychecks for employees, and pay bills to our subcontractors. As an employee or subcontractor, this tool is the most important part of how you receive timely and accurate payments.

• Project Management - With many different projects occurring simultaneously, it is important for Bolder Software to be able to manage them effectively. The Issue Tracker gives a a quick snapshot of how many projects each client has in production.

• Agile Software Development - We use the Issue Tracker to define various Sprints (or Releases), and assign a variety of Backlog items (or Issues) to each Sprint. Customers and Developers can then conduct periodic Scrum meetings from remote locations via phone conference while  viewing the Issue Tracker.

How do I add my Avatar to my Issue Tracker entries?

How do I find my Customer's project?

The Project viewer is the easiest way to navigate to Customer Projects, and can be found on the upper left menu of the Issue Tracker.

A tree is displayed. Clicking the "+" expands the tree while clicking on the text does not.

Although other hierarchies can exist, the general hierarchy of the tree is <Customer>\<Program>\<Project>:

How do I find a Repository Map?

Most projects have an associated repository. In order to checkout code, you'll need a Repository Map. Navigate to the project and select the "Documents" link.

How can I get started with Subversion?

*NOTE* Before getting started with Subversion, please make sure an administrator has granted you access to the Bolder Software Subversion repository.

Subversion can run on many platforms. In this FAQ, we'll assume you're using the Windows TortoiseSVN client to access the Bolder Software Subversion repository. You can get the latest version of TortoiseSVN at:

http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html

Subversion is a very powerful and complex software solution. If you are new to revision control, or haven't used Subversion much in the past, you should spend time with other Bolder Software engineers learning and understanding how to use the tool.

How do I check out code from the repository?

How do I check code into the repository?

How do I tag or label a version?

Once you've completed a Release (or an Agile Sprint), and it has been verified or approved, you can tag that version so that it can be checked out from the repository at a later time, and independent of the trunk. Tagging is a simple process, but attention to detail is important during this step since is is usually coupled to an Issue Tracker Release. Follow these steps to tag a version:

1. Locate - Navigate to (but not into) the local folder you wish to tag.
2. Tag - Right click on the folder and select TortoiseSVN->Branch-Tag
3. Path - Change the path field from  /trunk  to /tags/<version>
4. Log Message- Make sure to comment your tag with the associated issue in the Issue Tracker. Using the "Fixes" keyword, subversion will automatically add your comments to the Issue, and move the state of the issue to Resolved
5. Release - Make sure to change the Project Version to "Closed" in the Issue Tracker. Also make sure to close all of the bugs related to the release.

How do I use externals?

Some circumstances require checking out a collection of repositories. These repositories are discrete (independently version-able), and can be checked out individually, however, they also belong as externals to another repository. That repository has no real source code content but is simply a list of repositories that can be conveniently checked out as a group.

Un-versioning that folder is as simple as deleting all the external member folders, as well as the .svn folder.

Where should I build Executables and Installers?

Whether you're building in LabVIEW or TestStand, you should NEVER build in any of the National Instruments folders. This especially includes, but is not limited to <user.lib> and <instr.lib>. Building in these folders will yield catastrophic and unpredictable results.

Bolder Software has adopted a practice of using public folders for source code development  A good convention to follow here would be something like:

<Public>\<Customer>\LabVIEW_Builds\<Project>      

                          or      

<Public>\<Customer>\TestStand_Builds\<Project>

So for a project called "ULIP_SWAGR" at customer "Seakr" the following build path would be used on a Windows 7 platform:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Seakr\LabVIEW Builds\ULIP_SWAGR

You can add sub-folders for "Application" and "Installer" builds. Make sure to change your destination directory to something similar to the paths above.

How can I programatically get the version from my software?

For Executables, there is a function built into LabVIEW that can get the version of you compiled executable.The function resides in:

<vi.lib>\platform\fileVersionInfo.llb\FileVersionInfo.vi

*NOTE*, this only works for compiled executables, and will not work in the LabVIEW development environment.