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altenbach

Downloading the LabVIEW run-time engine should not require a NI profile

Status: Declined

National Instruments will not be implementing this idea. NI has no plans at this time to change the policy requiring an ni.com profile for downloading the run-time engine. The current workaround is to create an installer for your LabVIEW executable that includes the installer for the appropriate LabVIEW run-time engine.

This is not directly a LabVIEW idea, but it is still an idea that impacts many LabVIEW programmers.

 

To keep my distribution small, I distribute my installers without run-time engine and instruct the users to download and install the relevant run-time engine. I provide a link to the run-time download page.

 

Note that these users are NOT NI customers and not interested in any NI products. They are my customers (well, my programs are free) and are only interested getting my programs to work on their PC. They don't even care what was used to develop the program. There is no extra hardware involved. If they already use NI hardware, chances are they already have a profile.

 

My users don't need a NI profile and don't need the follow-up phone call or e-mail from NI, etc.

 

Typical phone exchange yesterday:

 

me: "just click my installer and install the program"

him: "OK, done."

me: "now run it."

him: "OK, ...... error about 2013 run-time engine".

me: "OK, install the run-time engine using the link I sent you in the same e-mail".

him: "clicking the link to go to the run time engine page....

        (..30 second discussion to decide between downloader and direct download...)"

him: "click..(wait for it!)... .it wants me to register..."

me: "OK, let's forget about that. come down to the lab and I will do it for you."

 

End result: more delays (it was late Friday and I was ready to leave), more work for me, more hassle.

 

While gazillions (:D) of registered users sounds good on paper for NI, these are false numbers because many profiles are one-time use and quickly forgotten.

 

I think downloading a run-time engine should NOT require a NI profile. Maybe it should still offer to log in or create a profile, but there should also be a bail-out option similar to "[] I don't want to register at this time, just download the run-time!".

 

 

Note that even better long term solutions have been proposed, but this idea could be implemented quickly and does not even need to involve any LabVIEW developers. 😄

14 Comments
Jeff-P
NI Employee (retired)

>What if the patch f1 changes VIs that are compiled in your EXE? Isnt it necessary to compile your EXE also?

 

This depends on the contents of the patch. If we are patching VIs that you are redeploying in your EXE, that will require you to rebuild your EXE. This would be a development system patch anyway, and not a Run-Time Engine patch because those VIs are not part of the RTE (there is nothing to patch on a system with just the RTE in that case). When we have a patch that affects the RTE it is typically a component of the RTE itself that is getting patched. I would encourage you to read the patch details (either in the KB or the readme) and determine if it something that impacts you. For patches that are marked Urgent, we strongly encourage users to install the patch.

 

For RTEs, we replace them inplace on the download page. So when there is a new patch to the RTE, we use the same download page and just replace the RTE download with the latest patch, so that one URL will always point to the latest RTE version for any given version. As mentioned above, having a URL that points to the latest major version might encourage users to download the wrong RTE assuming backwards compatibility (IE a user using 2012 installs the 2013 RTE because its 'better').

 

> I've had a few cases where they installed the "min" version

 

This is actually why we remaned that download to the Web Plugin and changed the description to explicitly call out what that RTE does. There was a lot of confusion with users thinking it was a lightweight RTE.

 

Jeff Peacock 

 

Product Support Engineer | LabVIEW R&D | National Instruments | Certified LabVIEW Architect 

Jose_O.
Member

Downloading the NI runtime should be an automatic process. If it is required by a distribution the instaler or the program at runtime shoud detect that and guide to download it automatically with user concent. 

 

altenbach
Knight of NI

> Downloading the NI runtime should be an automatic process ...

 

Yes, that is this idea, and I already mentioned it above. In the long term, that should e implemented.

Darren
Proven Zealot
Status changed to: Declined

National Instruments will not be implementing this idea. NI has no plans at this time to change the policy requiring an ni.com profile for downloading the run-time engine. The current workaround is to create an installer for your LabVIEW executable that includes the installer for the appropriate LabVIEW run-time engine.