CVI - Windows 10 - 2015 and onward

[Ian.W]

I'm looking at reviving my CVI support and updating from CVI 2009 to the current one.

To help justify the plunge I'd like to know more about plans for CVI2015:

• Planned support for Windows 10 (desktop only, but for development platform and for target platform)
• Distribution package sizes (for "Hello world")

Background / Context:

• Microsoft seems to be poised to push everyone they can to Windows 10. With a two-year release cycle for CVI, my fear is that Win 10 support in CVI may come in Q3 2017. (Note that Windows 8 previews were out starting Sept 2011, and RTM was Aug 1 2012. CVI support required the next release: CVI 2013 came out in August 2013. Hence my "next release" forecast of 2017.)
• Distribution packages have grown from 5 to 12 to 25 to 75 MB in the last several releases. The minimum size for CVI 2013 is a deal-breaker for us -- I get complaints about 25MB.

I don't mean to be overly negative - CVI does great things for us, but these two complex (and hard to control!) issues really are the two pain points that I'd like to see progress on.

Thanks,

Ian

[Wolfgang]

Hi Ian,

the issue of the size of distribution kits has been raised here and you're invited to support it

So far, unfortunately, the status is still 'New', not even 'Under Consideration'...

[Ian.W]

Thanks, Wolfgang. I have added my voice. (One important issue I mentioned there that I forgot to include here is the feasibility of uploading 74MB when on the road.) I bet it will be a real challenge for NI to tackle this, but I hope there is a solution.

On the other issue: Does anyone have any Windows 10 insights?

Ian

[jspeedz]

Ian.W,

Unfortunately, we cannot make an official statement on Windows 10 support for LabWindows/CVI 2015 at this time.  I would encourage you to sign up for our Beta program for LabWindows/CVI 2015.  That would allow you to test the distribution size and give direct feedback to the LabWindows/CVI 2015 team.

Regards,

Jacob Speedy
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[JonathanN · Accepted solution]

Ian,

Regarding your Windows 10 question, we have performed testing with pre-released versions of Windows 10 and we do expect our products to work with this operating system. However, we cannot claim official support until our products have been tested with the officially released version of Windows 10.

Regarding your deployment size concern, we did mention this feature incompatibility in our CVI 2013 readme which directed customers to this KB: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/A402AA9C304A33E186257B8E00630D00?OpenDocument

The KB doesn't fully explain why we chose to make this decision but we did think about this feature a good amount and ultimately we had to make some tradeoffs. The key points we considered where:

• It is much more difficult to scale installers using merge modules than compared with MSIs
• Using MSIs allows NI to more easily roll out patches to customers
• Its easier to implement additional deployment features on top of MSIs than compared with merge modules

Hope this helps.

[Ian.W]

Jacob and Jonathan,

Thank you both for your comments and explanation. I'm sure it is challenging to maintain flexibility to cover all the scenarios as well as ensure compatibility. I'll apply for the beta program.

As a side note, I've tested the limits of CVI 2009 on Windows 8.1 (which is not offically supported, I know!).  It was interesting in that it *seemed* to work for one hardware-free app, but if I built any distrbution kit it would not properly incorporate the security update to that version of CVI. The result was a defective distribution kit. It really underscores the need for official support for the version of Windows.

One last question: Is there a different support matrix for *target* platforms rather than development? Specifically does footnote 2 in the lifecycle page about no longer supporting Vista ("Versions ... CVI ..shipped after July 1, 2015, will not install or run on ...Windows Vista ...") apply to target systems as well or just development?

Thanks,

Ian

[jspeedz · Accepted solution]

Footnote 2 on that page will apply for both deployment and development.  

[Ian.W]

Thanks, jspeedz, for the clarification.

[gdargaud]

I have the opposite question (maybe I should start a new thread): is CVI still going to work on old versions of Windows for the foreseeable future ? The reason is that we do all our deployments on Linux, but since the CVI IDE runs only on Windows we run it on old XP virtual machines, which is perfectly adequate for development. I wouldn't want to have to waste my time with newfangled Windows since the only use for it is to run the CVI IDE.

[Ian.W]

I think that the "footnote 2" I mentioned above answers that question (although not what you want to hear):

LabWindows/CVI will drop support for Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003 as of July 1, 2015. Versions of LabWindows/CVI that are shipped after July 1, 2015, will not install or run on Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2003. For detailed information on this change, visit National Instruments Support Life Cycle for Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003