product key in Installer LabVIEW 8

[TCPlomp]

Hi All,

in LabVIEW 7.x you had with the application builder the option to generate a 'software key' to register your application in Windows. Now I can't locate this option in LV 8. Do I Have to register these keys manually with the new registry settings I can edit?

Thanks in advance,

Ton

[KvZ]

Hi Ton.

In the generate button in Application Builder (AB) for LabVIEW 7.x was needed in the case you would reuse a build script for other applications. if you did not generate a new key for each application (using the same build script) then Windows would think it was the same and uninstall the other application to replace this with the new one. Since the keys are equal the Windows Installer thinks you are upgrading to a newer version of the application that is already installed.

The LabVIEW 7.x AB would generate a new key each time you create a new build script so if you start a new build script for each application you will never run into the issues described above. This is because this key is saved with the build script and thus you can reuse this script with a new version of the application to let windows detect and automatically remove the old version and replace it with the new one.

 With LabVIEW 8.0 we have moved the build script in to the project file. so all settings that where in the old build scripts we have now in the project file (this is a XML based text file). For each Installer Specification that you create within a project you will get a new key. you can verify this by opening the project file in notepad and you will see a etry like this:

<Property Name="UpgradeCode" Type="Str">{A7C64E71-C85F-4310-9020-EB0B9BBAA397}</Property>

This is the same as what the generate key option did for LabVIEW 7.x. So if you which to make a new installer for a upgraded version of your application then you should reuse the installer specifications. else you should create a new one, and this will automatically get a new key.

Hope this awsers your question.

Kind regards,

Karsten

National Instruments 

[TCPlomp]

Hello Karsten,

thanks for clearing this up!

Is there somewhere a document with a description of the lvproj xml-scheme?

Ton

[KvZ]

Hi Ton,

No there is no documentation or scheme for the LabVIEW Project XML for now. the main reason for XML is that it is human readable and because it is text it can also easily be used in Source Code Control to track changes etc.

Thanks

Karsten