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LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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jlokanis

Detect runtime installers needed for installed components

Status: Completed
Available in LabVIEW 2013

The installer build spec dialog should analyze the components being installed and suggest what additional installers will be needed to allow the EXE (or what ever else is being installed) to function on the target machine.

Also, the 'Additional Installers' catagory screen should have detailed help explaining what each installer is for and why you might want to include it.  Just looking at the names is not obvious enough.  A good example are the following installer from the list:

 

LV Web Services

NI LV Web Services Runtime

NI LabVIEW Run-Time Engine Web Server 

NI LabVIEW Web Server

 

Can you tell me which one(s) of these is needed to support the RESTful web services on a target machine?  I cannot find this documented anywhere and when I called NI application support they could not either. 

-John
------------------------
Certified LabVIEW Architect
8 Comments
jjbloomfield
Member

In my experience I've run into problems with lacking installations for DataSocket and NI Variable Engine.  It would be great to automatically include (or at least suggest through a checklist) necessary installers such as NI DataSocket, NI Variable Engine.  If you have any DataSocket functions they don't work on deployment without the additional installer.  Likewise, Global Variables don't work if you don't include the Variable Engine in your installer. 

 

I like this idea.

TimmTheEnchanter
NI Employee (retired)

This seems like such an obvious thing...there should definitely be an auto-detect feature for anything in the project.  This is my input:

 

It may make this problem more apparent to first-time users if, the first time a user selects to build an executable, they get a pop-up which explains "LabVIEW executables require a run-time engine on the target machine" with a link to the KnowledgeBase article explaining this.  On that pop-up, there can be a "don't remind me again" option.

 

When building an installer, there could be something similar: "LabVIEW detected that these installers will be necessary to successfully deploy on a target machine.  Would you like to automatically include these installers?" with an option of "Don't run this analysis again" just in case some users don't like that auto-detect functionality.

National Instruments
Darren
Proven Zealot
Status changed to: In Development
 
JackDunaway
Trusted Enthusiast

@Darren wrote:

Status changed to: In Development


:thumbup1:

BYeske
Member

OMG I hope that this is pushed out in an patch as soon as it is available.  I just spent 4 hours today making installers and trying different ones to try and figure out what needs to be includded, currently my installer is pushing 1.2 GB and all I'm doing is grabbing video data from an ethernet connection and displaying it via IMAQ Draw.

Ben Yeske
tinkergnome
Member

I like the idea from TimmTheEnchanter who proposed:

When building an installer, there could be something similar: "LabVIEW detected that these installers will be necessary to successfully deploy on a target machine.  Would you like to automatically include these installers?" with an option of "Don't run this analysis again" just in case some users don't like that auto-detect functionality.

 

The responsibility of determining the necessary attachements for a functional vi should solely and squarely be with the LabVIEW Application Builder. We are Scientists, and Engineers, and are not interested in the intrinsics of the software, nor do we have the luxury of time for this purpose.

Darren
Proven Zealot
Status changed to: In Beta
 
Darren
Proven Zealot
Status changed to: Completed
Available in LabVIEW 2013