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Executable plugin modules

What is the best way to distribute a plugin architecture? I have a main application which will open and call by reference a plugin vi of a defined strict type (all plugins will have this defined connector pane).  This works well until I compile and move the vi.  The vi is a top level vi with 50+ subvis from different locations many of which I dont want to distribute.  How to allow a user to specify a single top level vi, but package this vi to be a single module instead of a lot of subvis from various locations.  I need to make additional modules and ship them after distribution as addons.  I am having some trouble getting an elegant solution. 
Paul Falkenstein
Coleman Technologies Inc.
CLA, CPI, AIA-Vision
Labview 4.0- 2013, RT, Vision, FPGA
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I've experimented with this before. The way I got it to work was building the plugin into a source distribution. This will make an LLB file. You can then drop the LLB into a plugins directory in the application folder. I made it so that each LLB would have to have a VI inside it with the same name as the LLB. This would be the plugin name, which I would use to populate a plugins menu item. When a plugin was selected, open a reference to \plugins\plugin name.llb\plugin name.vi.

I don't know if this is the "best" way to do it, but it worked for me. I'd like to hear of a better way, because I might implement this in my current project.

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Thanks this essentially what I came up with.  I used the save with options to move all files to the llb, and only had sligth modifications to adjust for the extra path in the relative paths.  the save with options is very nice, even protected my llb and took out the code so now all I have to do is send a single llb.  I was struggling to remember this oprion this morning.

 

Paul

Paul Falkenstein
Coleman Technologies Inc.
CLA, CPI, AIA-Vision
Labview 4.0- 2013, RT, Vision, FPGA
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You had asked this question before, and that thread seemed to imply you had a solution. What's changed?
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