Application installer or no installer?

[gstanczak]

Could someone advise when you need to include the installer when building an application, and alternatively, when the application will run directly from the .exe file without needing to be installed first.

I can imagine that if there are peripheral devices and drivers the installer would be necessary, but I really don't know.  Most times I forego the installer with little programs that I make to run on other machines, and they seem to run fine.  Is this okay?

Thanks for the help,

Greg

[RavensFan]

It all depends on what your program is doing and what may already be installed on the machine.

Some typical installs are:

1.  LabVIEW runtime engine (version matching the version the application was built)

2.  VISA runtime engine (if you are doing serial port, TCP/IP, GPIB, any other communication that uses VISA functions)

3.  DAQmx (if you are using NI data acquisition cards or devices)

4.  Others? .......

If the .exe is being put on a machine that already has the LabVIEW development environment, then there is no need to install these as they are already there.

If the .exe is being put on a machine that already has the items installed in the past (possibly from some other .exe application you created) no need to add to the installer.

If you want to install the drivers and runtimes manually by downloading from the NI website and installing them separately, then there is no need to add them to your app's installer.

If you want a single disc that does all of this for going onto machines that might not have the appropriate runtimes and device drivers, and you don't want to have someone be forced to manually search NI.com for the installers, then you should add them to your application's install disc.

In general, if the appropriate runtimes and device drivers are installed, you probably don't even need an installer for your .exe.  You can copy the .exe to wherever you want on the other PC and just run it.  However, if the application is complicated enough that you want to have a hierarchy of support files, then you may want to create an installer for your application even if you don't need to add all the other installers listed above.

[_Fabio_]

Same problem...

I'm developing an exe file that uses tcp connections (a client server connected to a data server pc).

On the server side there's already a program running: it uses an UDP connectionta make data available to other programs over the intranet.

I discovered that if i install the runtime engine (eg embedding it in my program installer), the UDP program stops working. I'm talking about 2 or 3 days later, and not as soon as i've installed the runtime. As soon i remove the NI runtime-engine the UDP program starts to work! This happend only on the pc that runs the UDP server. The client is ok. I think it might be due to some other rt driver that starts itself

Is there a way to have the runtime engine on the pc without installing it? I've tryed copying the tvrt.dll in the same directory as the exe as suggeste by KnowledgeBase... but it's not enought.

Any suggestion?

Is there a way to determine which services does the runtime include in it's installer?

Thanks

[Tanya_V]

Hi _Fabio_,

If I understand correctly, you have built a LabVIEW executable which uses TCP. You have put this on a server computer and have installed the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine (RTE) along with it. On that server machine, you also have another program running that uses UDP, and now that the RTE is installed it stops working after a few days. Is this correct?

The LabVIEW RTE will need to be installed to run the TCP program. So we'll have to figure out why removing the RTE seems to fix the problem. I have a few question to try and pinpoint the problem.

1. What version of LabVIEW are you using?

2. Was the UDP program also created in LabVIEW?

3. If so, was it created in the same version of LabVIEW as the TCP program.

4. What ports are you using in both the TCP and UDP program?

5. Is the TCP program running correctly?

Regards,

Tanya V

Applications Engineer

National Instruments