LabVIEW 2009 application installer

[rickygolf]

I have created a program using LabVIEW 2009, and I have created an installer for the program.  When a user installs the program they see a screen during the installation called Destination Directory.  Here it allows you to pick a directory for my application and a directory for National Instruments products.  On the next screen is a National Instruments Software License Agreement.  Is it possible to get rid of the National Instruments products directory and the software license agreement?  Is it possible to create an installer with no references to NI or LabVIEW?  This may be asking too much.

[hecmar.arreola]

The advantage of the installer are:

1. It is conveniently accessible to your project.

2. It conveniently can package the Runtime and Driver features your LabVIEW application will probably need in order to work.

If you don't need to take advantage of these two things, you could build your application and use a different packager to actually install your files on a users computer.  There isn't a way to avoid them knowing it is LabVIEW, because they will definitely need to install the LabVIEW runtime in order for your application to work.  But if you wanted more control than what the NI installer offers there are other installers you could use to distribute your applications.  At some point, the user will have to install the runtime though.  You could have it call the runtime installer from whatever installer you use.

Message Edited by Nickerbocker on 09-03-2009 04:48 PM

[battler.]

Can the run-time installer be run in the background?  Does it always require you to accept the NI licence agreement?

[Jason_P]

I believe you can set up a silent installer that automatically accepts the EULA...

[Jason_P]

OK - had to dig a bit, but here is what you need to create a fully automated installer:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/878FC4C374013ADF8625733D00688F67?OpenDocument

Jason

[Chris_G.]

Hello All,

Jason P has pointed out a workable solution, however, this solution is an installer which the end user would have to run from a command line prompt.  If you wish to allow the user to run a setup.exe created by the LabVIEW Application Builder, you will have to complete the following steps:

(1)    Create a Spec File – The instructions to do this are in the link that Jason P provided.  This will basically require you to just run the extra installer (LabVIEW Run-Time Engine, most likely) from the command prompt on a machine, as seen in the article.  Once you have this spec file, you can include it, and the executable for the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine in your project.

(2)    Uncheck the LabVIEW Run-Time engine in the Additional Installers section of your Installer Build Spec, and then go to the Advanced tab, and check Run executable at end of installation.  Then specify the executable for the LabVIEW RTE, and give the command line arguments seen in the article listed by Jason P:

               “setup [SpecFile] /q /AcceptLicenses yes” 

             Where [SpecFile] is the path to the spec file that you generated in step (1).

You will probably notice that this will only work for one extra installer, so if you wish to deploy your application with more than just one additional installer (say, LabVIEW RTE and the DAQmx driver), you will have to create some other method (perhaps a batch file), or just deal with the end user having to click through the license agreement prompts.

[battler.]

Does anyone know exactly how to create this spec file?

What are the steps?

Thanks.

[Dennis_Knutson]

What problems do have following the link above and the link in that document to the specifics?

[battler.]

Dennis,

I think I created the spec file ok.

I want to create a silent install of the RTE (2009) following install of the APP.

Do I need to include all the files of the RTE in my project?

I tried to download the 2009 RTE but it was roughly 100Mb.  The one I got from disk was 38Mb...

Thanks.

[battler.]

I downloaded the LV 2009 RTE from ni.com.  The file is 160Mb.  This is just too big.

Is this the correct file to include with my installer (i.e. to silently install).

Cheers,

Battler.