Cleaner Upgrades

[ErnieH]

I would like to see future versions install without changing anything in already installed LabVIEW versions. No updates to toolkits, add-ons,  or anything else. After the install, the previous version(s) should work exactly as they did before the new install without any changes. I would also like to be able to install older versions as if there was no newer versions were installed.

[Intaris]

Oh yes, especially Vision and VISA and so on....  Ways to co-install different versions would be a real blessing but I think it's a very difficult (others may use the word impossible) task....

[muks]

NIce ask though. Intaris, Did you forget the kudos?

[Intaris]

Why yes, I did.  Thanks for the reminder.

[rolfk]

While I agree that installing Toolkits should not remove older versions of that Toolkit without explicitedly being instructed to do so, and I had never major problems with upgrading VISA and GPIB drivers and older versions suddenly not working, there is a problem with some of the software that gets installed.

The major problem will be DAQ which also tends to keep working in older versions (if you can prevent the new installer to remove the unsupported interface libraries in older versions) but there is no guarantee that it will and NI in fact can't reasonably be expected to test every new driver version with all possible LabVIEW version back to version 1.0. But even IMAQ is tricky since several of its support libraries are installed system wide, and integrate tightly into the calling LabVIEW process, with many features in newer versions relaying on specific support in LabVIEW itself that older versions simply don't have.

Of course given unlimited testing and developer resources, NI could support any old version with a new driver, but nobody has unlimited resources of anything, except some people who have unlimited hope 🙂

The pragmatic aproach is to use multi boot or virtual machines for this kind of things. It doesn't cost you as a developer very much to do that but gives you complete control.

[Klaus_M]

Major problem with upgrades arise when deploying runtime versions (installers) of applications based on NI-DAQmx. Development is one thing, application is the other thing.

Example:

A customer has installed several runtime applications based on LabVIEW2009 + NI-DAQmx 8.9.x.

If we deploy a new application based on NI-Daqmx 9.1.5, the customer is prompted that he has to de-install the old NI-DAQmx AND all applications and software based on it on it. This is unacceptable.

(Furthermore, after deinstalling the previous NI-DAQ version, the PC starts with error messages concernig missing dll's..)

It would be very helpful, if there would be a simple explanation of NI on the compatibility LabVIEW - NI-DAQmx versions, how to generate runtimes/installers with older NI-DAQmx versions and how to prevent such annoying situations as described before.