Leaderboard

I actually just wrote a blog entry on how to create and distribute templates using the new Create Project Dialog and LabVIEW 2012. I've already started using it for a number of the applications and examples I post to the web. Check it out here: Creating and Distributing Custom Templates with the New Create Project Dialog

We also use XML files for storing configuration. I think this is a great solution. I do not think it is a good idea to use the default values of the typedef to serve as default configuration values, since this is very unreliable and difficult to mainintain. In particular, it means that the developer has to edit the source code (and rebuild the application) to change the default values. Moreover, one has to have access to the source code even to see what the default values are (or maybe you run the editor and view them there?). Our approach is instead to include an additional file for each configuration (e.g., MyConfigurationDefault.xml pairs with MyConfiguration.xml). Associated with the default files we include "Restore Page Defaults" and "Restore All Defaults" buttons in the configuration editor. (We simply read from the Default files as appropriate.) This has worked quite well. (Note that if someone wanted just to know what the default values were they could also just open the XML file; in practice we just read them in the configuration editor.) If a user were to blow away the entire ConfigurationFiles directory (this hasn't happened to us) reinstalling the configuration files (which has its own version so that reinstalling the configuration does not necessarily reinstall the rest of the application) restores the original files. In short, I advocate: 1) Supporting recall of default configuration values in your configuration editor. 2) Storing default values in files in the same fashion you store the user-edited values. [What this means in practice is that to set the default values we open the configuration editor, set the values to be the defaults we want using the editor, save the configuration, and then copy the resulting files as default files. Done.]

Making excellent use of LabVIEWs x-platform capabilities then