National Instrument has just released version 8.5 of its visual programming language and integrated development environment LabVIEW. The following new features have been added to LabVIEW development environment

• synchronizing LabVIEW project environment with hard disk folder content
• new visual merge tool for merging different versions of same VI
• new functionality for resolving cross-linking issues
• multi-core support for LabVIEW Real-Time
• quickly create accessor methods for LabVIEW classes

In addition the language has got some new features as well

• enhanced memory efficiency with new in-place memory structures
• support for shared reentrant VIs
• support for recursive calls to member VIs of LabVIEW classes
• feedback nodes can now be used outside loops
• ability to exit for loops in middle of iteration with new stop terminal
  
• enhanced linear algebra support

The full list of changes can be found in the upgrade notes pdf document. NI has also published the list of most important bug fixes.

It’s interesting to see how these new features affect the software development with LabVIEW. I’m especially happy to see the support for recursion in LabVIEW object-oriented programming, as the lack of that was one of the most restrictive things in the previous LVOOP implementation. As of now, I found no evaluation download link for the latest release. I guess we’ll have to wait to really get our hands on this latest toy from NI. Any comments and further information is very welcome.

EDIT: The download link for LV 8.5 for Windows evaluation is now online.