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updating vis after deploying

I've used the TestStand deployment utility to sucessfully deploy all my code to a machine with LabVIEW runtime environment. However, I found a bug in one of the VIs I wrote, so after making changes on my development machine I am trying to update the VI on the target machine.  I thought I could simply copy the new VI over without going through the whole deploying process again, as building the deployment package takes about 1/2 an hour, but after copying it over I get an error message saying that the VI is not executable. The bug fix didn't involve calling any new VIs that weren't included in the original deployment, so I am positive that I am not missing a component.  I'm using LabVIEW 8.0.1 and TS 3.5

Are there some additional steps I need to take for this to work?  I really don't want to have to redeploy my code everytime I want to make an update.

Thanks for any help
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Are you editing the development copy of the VI, or the copy that the deployment utility copies to the "Image" directory?  If it is the former, it will not work because that VI has not gone through the deployment package.  The deployment utility makes changes to this VI, such as changing the reference to anything in vi.lib, so that is likely why it is not executable.  Instead, change the VI in the image directory, so long as you do not add any additional subVIs to it, you should be able to just deploy that single VI. However, such a deployment is more risky and may or may not work as the safest way to deploy is to use the deployment utility. I would also like to recommend you exercise extreme caution when using any VIs on the image directory.  Make sure you have no other VIs in memory when you make such changes, or else LabVIEW may re-link your subVIs that are already in memory to the location in memory, not the proper location.  There are a few gotchas with doing this, so please be aware.

If you need to add any additional VIs, I would highly recommend using the deployment utility and the development copy of the VIs.  A possible way around the time issue is to create a new deployment with the settings (such as supportVI location) identical to the same directory it was in.  This approach is still not full-proof, as there are a few corner cases it will not work, so use this technique at your own risk.  It is also very easy to make a minor mistake or introduce a new problem that the deployment utility would catch.

The deployment utility, although time consuming for large projects, will remove most of the headaches associated with problems in the above techniques.  I would highly recommend using it, rather than these techniques whenever possible.

Allen P.
NI
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