topic Build process hangs in LabVIEW

Build process hangs

drjdpowell — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 13:45:31 GMT

Has anyone every seen a Build window like this? Says "Initializing build. This could take several minutes...", but also has the "Done" button available. LabVIEW is not using any CPU in this state. Hitting Done (or Explore) exits the dialog, but LabVIEW is completely frozen and must be hast-killed from the Windows Task Manager.

This affects some, but not all, of my builds, so it must involve something about the application I'm building.

Re: Build process hangs

mjhakkar — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:25:13 GMT

Yes, I've been getting that in the past few weeks. Last night I left the build on and it had eventually completed after 3 hours (or something like that).

I am using LV2015, both 32bit and 64bit versions.

Re: Build process hangs

gangxu — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 20:54:50 GMT

Never saw this error before. But one of the building error occurred to me is because I didn't close the vi.

Re: Build process hangs

cbutcher — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 07:16:10 GMT

I recently started hitting this same issue.

@drjdpowell wrote:

Has anyone every seen a Build window like this? Says "Initializing build. This could take several minutes...", but also has the "Done" button available. LabVIEW is not using any CPU in this state. Hitting Done (or Explore) exits the dialog, but LabVIEW is completely frozen and must be hast-killed from the Windows Task Manager.

This affects some, but not all, of my builds, so it must involve something about the application I'm building.

One of the libraries I'm using is your SQLite code, building for Linux-RT.

As part of the setup, I'm generating dummy files for {extension-functions,sqlite3}{,_64}.dll (i.e. 4 files) in a Pre-Build step, since these previously failed the build if they didn't exist, but aren't actually required for a Linux-RT application (since there SQLite is loaded as a shared library from a system-installed version, if I recall correctly?)

Now those files are generated but nothing else appears in the build folder - not sure if this library is related but thought I'd mention it, since I'd guess you're also using it for some of your builds (5 years ago? hmm...)

I was using this without (other) issue until just this week though - the "Initializing..." with "Done" available and frozen behaviour you mentioned is new.

I'll try waiting as Marko suggested.

Did you find any other causes or solutions?

Re: Build process hangs

drjdpowell — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:04:39 GMT

I'm afraid I have no memory of this from 5 years ago. I must have fixed it somehow, as I haven't had this specific issue since then.

Re: Build process hangs

JÞB — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 13:33:07 GMT

The times I have seen that I traced it back to a developer issue where I "inspected " the build output and realized I had stuffed a dependency in the wrong output location then fixed the spec and attempted to rebuild without cleaning the build output folder.

My guess is that the app builder does not really rebuild anything that does not need rebuilding because it sees the object exists somewhere and can get very confused when it exists in a recursive location but can't see it at the desired location so it hangs.

The obvious workaround is to never make a mistake then try to fix it.

Yes, building to a clean output location will always take longer than rebuilding. But, if the change is non-trivial or results in a dependency move. Clean first!

NI never tests for every mistake developers can make. Whereas I, OTOH, have made many more mistakes than NI accounts for.

Re: Build process hangs

pawhan11 — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 06:53:31 GMT

You could try to delete build destination directiry. It helped me many times when build gave strange outputs or hanged

Re: Build process hangs

cbutcher — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 07:20:55 GMT

@JÞB wrote:
Yes, building to a clean output location will always take longer than rebuilding. But, if the change is non-trivial or results in a dependency move. Clean first!

This was one of the first things I tried (and then the favourite clear compiled cache dialog).

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to help.

Diagram Disabling some bits has gotten me builds working - I'm not sure if the problem is a valid objection to invalid code, or an invalid objection to corrupted source, but it at least narrows the range of potential fixes.

@JÞB wrote:

The times I have seen that I traced it back to a developer issue where I "inspected " the build output and realized I had stuffed a dependency in the wrong output location then fixed the spec and attempted to rebuild without cleaning the build output folder.

My guess is that the app builder does not really rebuild anything that does not need rebuilding because it sees the object exists somewhere and can get very confused when it exists in a recursive location but can't see it at the desired location so it hangs.

Hmm, interesting. Will try see if there's something like this going on... Doesn't sound completely out of the question.

Re: Build process hangs

JÞB — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 11:39:23 GMT

According to prophecy, the first thing the app builder does is attempt to create a source distribution with all the VI properties reset to those in the build spec (debug disabled, typedefs disconnected, project library members removed, FP, BDs gone, etc...)

A long hang here COULD indicate a project dependency in a long search path that probably should have been moved into the project. A hang might also be due to exactly how the source is saved in the temporary location. Specific implementations are not documented and are therefore subject to improvement.

A Build Error 1502 can occur if something like a method is used that requires the BD or FP to be in memory or a weak link exists(e.g. an FPGA bit file reference)

So my workflow is:

Floss project
Ensure all build specs are ordered
Clean all build specs
Save all this project
Build all

My hair may be going grey but, I still have a thick head of hair and don't find myself pulling it out in frustration.

Re: Build process hangs

Bob_Schor — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 12:31:34 GMT

As the Champion of Channel Wires, I regret to say that if you (ab)use them as much as I do, you may eventually run into an Infinite Build. I use Messenger Channels a lot (for Channel Message Handlers -- CMH instead of QMH), and I suspect changing the "State" component, defined as an Enum that has a dedicated TypeDef (as does the Message Type, a cluster of State + Data, a variant) can provoke this "infinite hang".

In this case, the "fix" (once you realize the problem) is simple. Go find the "ChannelInstances" folder (on my PC, and probably yours, it is located in "Documents\LabVIEW Data\2019(32-bit)\ExtraVILib". Choose the "grandparent" folder according to the Version of LabVIEW you are using. The ChannelInstances folder can be safely deleted -- when you go to do the Build, LabVIEW will simply re-create all of the Channel routines you need in a new ChannelInstances folder as part of the Build process (which will run so much faster ...).

Bob Schor

Re: Build process hangs

Kyle97330 — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 18:27:04 GMT

Just as something else to check, do you have antivirus software you can temporarily disable while doing a build?

Any time a program does things where it creates or modifies EXE or DLL files that can cause some antiviruses to go nuts because they need to scan everything under the sun that could possibly be executable code and can go too far when you're creating new ones as part of a build.