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LabVIEW
C Code Generator not installing with LabView 2018 (asking for 2015 LV version)
Solved!
This is the 32 bit version! You can install it and will get a 7 day trial period. The C Generator is AFAIK not officially supported in LabVIEW after 2015. It was a product that was created from the earlier LabVIEW for Embedded Toolkits for ARM and AD Blackfin embedded targets. Both proofed to be impossible to support and maintain and were discontinued and NI never really decided what they should do with the C Generator. While it was a substantial investment to create, it proofed to be to complicated to use for almost every potential user, the created code while technically quite correct, was very complex and more or less impossible to understand or maintain, and the price point was way beyond what any average user was willing to shell out. All in all a product with to many problems and to few potential users to make it a feasible solution.
When you buy a LabVIEW license you get a serial number that will not only enable you to activate the current version of LabVIEW, but you can also activate previous versions of LabVIEW with it. But if you do not buy it with an SSP and maintain it, your serial number will not let you activate later versions of LabVIEW.
I finally got success not only in installing, but also in running LabVIEW C Generator 2017 module on LV 2018 and 2019. So you guys could try the steps below, if you don't want to install fresh LabVIEW 2017 for it.
N.B.: Don't try 64-bit versions of LV, C Gen won't work on them! Also don't try LabVIEW 2020 (both 32- and 64-bit), because C Gen support was partially removed from it due to its depreciation. I have just tested on LabVIEW 2019 32-bit and will use it as an example onwards.
1. Make sure, you don't have LabVIEW 2017 folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments. If you have it, then temporary rename it or delete, if you don't need it.
2. Unpack 2017CGenerator.exe with your favourite unarchiver and go to Products directory.
3. Manually install all these packages:
- LabVIEW_CGenerator_2017
- LabVIEW_FF_Runtime_Engine_2017
- LabVIEW_Runtime_Engine_2017
- every package beginning with NI_Embedded_
It all gets installed into LabVIEW 2017 folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments. Other packages should already be installed on the machine, if LabVIEW 2018 or 2019 is installed.
4. Now go to LabVIEW 2017 folder, select everything except LabVIEW.ini, copy and paste into C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2019 with replace.
5. Go to CCodeGen\bin folder in your LabVIEW directory and open lvcg.ini in a text editor.
6. Change libDir line to C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2019\
7. Make sure, that you have a valid C Gen license in C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\License Manager\Licenses (trial or common one) and make sure, that it's issued for that exact LabVIEW version (2019, for example). Honestly, I don't know, if you could purchase C Gen license for LV 2018 or 2019 as it's unsupported for C Gen module, but I'm saying it anyway.
If you licensed the module properly, you'll see that C Gen picture in LabVIEW's About window:
It also could be checked with this "Gen C Code Variant" private method, used internally in the build process:
Change the VI path to any your VI or even empty VI to test it out. If everything is okay, you should get this result:
It means, that C Gen module is fine and wants the rest of the parameters to work on. But if you get "Target is not supported." message, then you have some problems with the module license. The same message is displayed, when trying to make a build in the project properties. Kinda unobvious message, it took many hours from me to know, what's the deal.
8. That's all. You could try to build something to see, how it goes.
I also tweaked lvcg.exe a little to load LabVIEW Full Featured RTE 2019 instead of 2017, but it appears to be unnecessary as the original lvcg works fine too. So not posting that.
Would like to remind once again, that C Gen work in anything newer than LV2017 is absolutely unsupported and not tested, so play with it at your own risks!
