The document discusses the incorporation of branching workflows in LabVIEW development to enhance team efficiency and establish a reliable delivery pipeline. It highlights various source code management systems, common workflows like trunk-based and git-flow, and notes the limitations of LabVIEW in handling certain file types. A method termed promiscuous integration is suggested as a workaround for these limitations to ensure effective team collaboration.

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Branching Workflows for Accelerated
Team Development
Ching-Hwa Yu
Software Engineering Manager
CLA, CTA
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Incorporating branching workflows can significantly
accelerate development
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Delivery Pipeline
Source Code Management
Branching Workflows
Limitations

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Developing software at a fast pace to scale is
challenging
Custom
Steps
Tools
Drivers
Database
LabVIEW
TestStand
SCM

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Establishing a repeatable delivery pipeline is essential to
team development
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Figure 1. Continuous Delivery Process Diagram (Humble, 2010)

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A number of modern source code management systems
are available
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Git Mercurial Perforce Helix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_version_control_software
VSTS

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Modern versioning systems have features specifically
designed for team development
It’s not about distributed vs. centralized…
It’s all about the branching…
– Frictionless Context Switching
– Feature/Issue Based Workflow
– Role-Based Codelines
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Trunk based development with release branches is the
most widely used workflow
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Figure 2. Trunk Based Development (paulhammant.com)

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Feature branching (Task Driven Development) is an
extremely popular workflow but it has downsides
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Not “Pure” CI
Smart Build Server
– Bamboo
– Jenkins
Figure 3. Basic Branch-Per-Issue Workflow (atlassian.com)

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Git-flow is a popular workflow using feature branching
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Figure 4. Development using Git-flow Workflow (atlassian.com)

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Branching is great but LabVIEW has it’s limitation when
it comes to merging and diffs
LVMerge and LVDiff doesn’t
support all LabVIEW file types
– Projects
– Xctls
– Classes
– Libraries
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A workaround to the limitations is a method called
Promiscuous Integration (PI) – also known as Cherry
picking
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Figure 5. Promiscuous Integration (martinfowler.com)

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SourceTree is an extremely popular Git client
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Figure 6. SourceTree (atlassian.com)

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TortoiseHg is a very popular Mercurial client
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Figure 7. TortoiseHg Workbench (bitbucket.org)

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P4V is the default client for native Perforce
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Figure 8. P4V (perforce.com)

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In summary, combining branching workflow into a
repeatable delivery pipeline can significantly accelerate
team development
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Resources for additional reading
• Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912
• Continuous Integration by Paul Duvall, Steve Matyas, and Andrew Glover
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321336380
• Martin Fowler – http://martinfowler.com
• Paul Hammant – http://paulhammant.com
• Git Branching model (Git-flow)
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
• Atlassian Git tutorials – https://www.atlassian.com/git/
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