Want to become a VIPM Community publisher? Great! This guide will give you an overview of the steps required to build your package and ensure it meets all the requirements for publishing to the VIPM Community. It will also show you links to some great resources for hosting your project, so the community can provide feedback and collaborate.

Create your Open Source Package/Project

First, you’ll need a package (of course), and it’ll need to be licensed under and approved open source license, so users have the right to use your package). and you’ll need to share your project’s source code publicly (so users can find the source code and rebuild the package, report issues, and make contributions to your project).

1) Create a Package

The first step in sharing your package, is to create a VI Package of the VIs that you want to share. You can find out more information about how to build a package, here:

• Package Building Guide
• Packaging guidelines for the VIPM Community (coming soon)

2) Choose a License

Packages published to the VIPM Community must be licensed under an OSI-approved open source license -- this ensures that end users are free to use the code in their projects, and have access to the source code. We recommend the BSD license because it’s simple and provides end-users with the rights to use it in typical LabVIEW applications (commercial and non-commercial).  Here’s some more useful information:

• How to choose an open source license for your LabVIEW code

2) Share your Project’s Source Code

Services like Github (most popular), Gitlab, or Bitbucket to host your package’s source code publicly.

Notes about these services:

• Free for Open Source - These services are typically free for open source projects. yay!
• Require Knowledge of Git - These services do require that you understand how to use the git source code control system. If you're really interested in software engineering and collaborative development, you'll need to learn how to use git.
• Provide Issue Trackers and Collaboration Tools - These services are nice, because most of them provide issue trackers (for bugs and feature requests), and also allow other users to fix bugs and/or implement features and make those fixes available to you, for possible inclusion into your project.

Publish your Package on VIPM.io

After you’ve completed the prerequisite steps, above, you can submit your package for release to the VIPM Community. Note that packages must meet professional-level coding standards, in order to be accepted for release to the VIPM Community.

Ready to publish your package?

Visit vipm.io/publish