Standalone NI Update Service tool

[ngc6193]

I have multiple workstations which are all offline on purpose on a standalone network. They never see the internet, and this is where I do all my LabVIEW development and utilize whatever tools I build.

To keep up with software update requirements as dictated by the Government organization I work under, I have to keep software updates as close as possible to an up-to-date condition. For some reason when I finally decided to update to LV2014 DS2 disk set, something went wrong and the first thing I thought of was the update directory I copied off anotether machine which was on the internet and had received online NI LabVIEW updates. I have found that far too much time is spent finding, sorting through NI download files having inconsistant naming conventions, doing whatever research is possible to assure an update won't breaks oemthing else, downloading , and then manually executing these updates in the correct as NI Update Service tool would. (And hopefully in the correct order)

So after some thought, I came to the conclusion that there is an easy way to manage this, the NI Update Service tool could manage this with the addition of a monthly or bi-monthly update configuration file. A file similar to what other software tools use out there to manage what the recent pataches are for let's say Microsoft as an example, or McAfee's A/V definitions. Belarc Advisor is really the tool that led me to this moment in time and thought. They have update config files which contain the latest versions of MS patches and security updates listed so when you run the tool it tells you what needs to be executed to get MS back up to date. Of course this is really useful if off line and one doesn't have the MS update service running.

So my idea is to modify the NI Update Service tool providing a version that has a switchable user mode to run the tool in an offline condition. It would need to have the tool look at a default location where the new u[pdate files would be placed by the user. The initial tool config file would need downloading or a basic get started config file could initially be installed off the DVD set. Then the user could execute the tool which would dump out a detailed desription of what the current installed LabVIEW version is, all modules, any patches, and where to of course find the latest version NI Update Service tool config file. In addition, the output file would provide a detailed list of all available patches, updates, and up[grades along with download links for each so the user knows where to retrieve them from saving even more user time. This to me would eliminate the current method of user uncertainty and allow updates to be applied in a more timely fashion with consitancy across multiple machines and completeness.

[karljustin]

I have a need for offline updates (or offline update identification) as well.

[metux]

In your case, I'd suggest isolating the LV stuff into it's own container. For each new version, do a completely fresh installation (from a clean container base image) and in production just switch the container images.

OTOH, deployment would be trivial if they'd just properly package their software for the various target platforms and remove their conceptionally broken homebrewn installer stuff.

Package management like APT is now 20+ years industrial-grade proven technology. One just has to use it, instead of hacking up own homebrewn installers.

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Additional-NI-Software-Idea/Use-native-package-managers-for-all-sw-deployme...