labview-icon-editor

LabVIEW Icon Editor

CI Status Latest Release Discord Chat License: MIT Coding hours LabVIEW Version —

🗂 Table of Contents

For LabVIEW Users:

For Contributors:

📌 Overview

The LabVIEW Icon Editor is an open-source, MIT-licensed tool for creating and editing VI icons, delivered as a VI Package. Each official LabVIEW release automatically includes the latest Icon Editor from this repository’s main branch (the next integration is targeting LabVIEW 2026 Q3).

In practice, your contributions – whether new features, fixes, or improvements – can become part of the Icon Editor shipped with LabVIEW itself. The source code is maintained in LabVIEW 2020 (20.0) format for broad compatibility, and the released VI Package is built and validated against LabVIEW 2020 (20.0).

NI’s open-source initiative encourages community collaboration on this project to continuously improve the Icon Editor and streamline LabVIEW development workflows.

📦 Installation

Prerequisites: • LabVIEW 2020 (20.0) or newer • VI Package Manager (VIPM) installed • (Development note: Source code is saved in LabVIEW 2020 (20.0) for building and backward compatibility.)

  1. Download the latest .vip installer from the Releases page.
  2. Open VIPM (VI Package Manager).
  3. Install the package by double-clicking the downloaded .vip file or using File ▶ Open Package in VIPM.
  4. Verify the installation by launching LabVIEW, creating a new VI, and opening the Icon Editor (e.g. right-click the VI icon and choose Edit Icon).

For additional details and troubleshooting tips, see INSTALL.md.

🧩 Key Components

  1. Source Code (VIs) – The editor’s functionality is implemented entirely in LabVIEW, as a collection of VIs organized into a project. This includes the UI and logic for icon editing.
  2. PowerShell Automation – A suite of PowerShell scripts (built on the G-CLI package, a VIPM dependency included in runner_dependencies.vipc) supports repeatable build and test tasks. These scripts allow running LabVIEW build steps and packaging from the command line, ensuring consistent results between local development and CI. G-CLI is a third-party dependency and is not affiliated with NI.
  3. CI/CD Workflows – GitHub Actions workflows are provided for common tasks:
    • Build VI Package – Compiles the source and produces a .vip artifact (VI Package).
    • Run Unit Tests (now part of the main CI pipeline) – Executes automated tests to verify the Icon Editor’s behavior in a clean LabVIEW environment. Additional details on these pipelines are in CI Workflows and the CI Workflow (Multi-Channel Release Support).

🚀 Getting Started & Contributing

We welcome both code and non-code contributions – from adding new features or fixing bugs to improving documentation and testing.

For detailed contribution guidelines (branching strategy, coding style, etc.), please see the CONTRIBUTING.md document. The /docs folder also contains setup guides and technical notes (summarized below).

🌱 Feature & Experiment Workflows

Standard Feature Contribution Workflow:

  1. Propose & Discuss – Start by proposing your idea via GitHub Discussions or by opening an issue. Discussing first helps refine the idea and get feedback.
  2. Issue Approval & Assignment – Once the idea is approved, maintainers label the issue Workflow: Open to contribution. After you volunteer, a maintainer assigns the issue and sets up a branch such as feature/<issue number>-<short-description>, ensuring the issue is marked In Progress. The workflow defined in ci-composite.yml triggers, but its jobs run only when the issue-status gate passes (branch pattern issue-<number> and issue Status In Progress). Runs failing this gate appear in GitHub Actions but skip subsequent jobs.
  3. Development Setup – Fork the repository and clone your fork. Check out the feature branch. Prepare your LabVIEW environment (recommend LabVIEW 2025 (25.0) or newer with required dependencies applied). You can develop straight from the project. NOTE: You will be able to run the lv_icon.vi from the project, but it will not be the active icon editor in the IDE. It is recommended to build the PPL and VI Package and install the package to test in the IDE.
  4. Implement & Test – Develop your changes using LabVIEW. Test the editor manually in LabVIEW to ensure your changes work. Run any available unit tests.
  5. Submit a Pull Request – Open a PR linking to the issue. Our CI will automatically run and build a .vip package with your changes for testing. Maintainers and others can install this pre-release package to test your contribution. Iterate on any review feedback.
  6. Merge & Release – Once your contribution is approved, it will be merged into the develop branch. During the next release cycle, develop is merged into main and a new official Icon Editor version is released. At that point, your contribution is on track to ship with the next LabVIEW release.

Experimental Feature Workflow:

For very large or long-term contributions, NI may use an experiment/<feature-name> branch:

(See EXPERIMENTS.md for full guidelines on experimental branches.)

📚 Documentation

In-depth documentation and reference guides are located in the /docs directory. A complete index is available in docs/README.md. Notable documents include:

📄 License & CLA

This project is distributed under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file for details. By contributing to this repository, you agree that your contributions can be distributed under the same MIT license and included in official LabVIEW releases. (In practice, this means you’ll be asked to sign a simple Contributor License Agreement on your first pull request, confirming you are okay with NI using your contributions in LabVIEW.)

💬 Contact & Community

🙏 Thanks for Contributing!

Your ideas, testing, and code contributions directly shape the Icon Editor experience across the LabVIEW community. Thank you for helping improve this tool for the entire LabVIEW community!

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