LabVIEW 2021 on Linux: missing TimedLoop

[ATotallyDifferentOne]

Hello,

I'm doing my first steps with LabVIEW 2021 Community edition under Linux. I wanted to open an example vi from a different source which needs files under <vilib>/Platform/TimedLoop. My installation is missing these files. Is this a feature not available in the community edition or only not available under Linux?

[Dataflow_G · Accepted solution]

I've been playing with the Linux community edition and also noticed the timed loop was missing when porting some Windows code. According to the timed loop help, they're only available on Windows and real-time targets, not Linux or macOS. It seems they've been missing from the Linux version since Timed Loops were first added to LabVIEW. This thread from 2008 has some more info.

[rolfk]

And even on Windows it is not behaving in the exact same way as under the RT targets. It is a sort of simulation of the Timed Loop and was necessary in order to be able to edit VIs for RT targets (you really edit under Windows even when you are inside a RT target in the project and then deploy the code to the RT target).

So in order for the editor to be able to create VIs that contain a Timed Loop, LabVIEW needs to be able to place such a beast on the diagram and the Windows installation of VIs needs to have at least a dummy structure. NI went a bit further than only creating a dummy Timed Loop and implemented a backend that simulates most aspects of the Timed Loop as it runs under the RT systems. But it is not really real-time and has differences in behaviour of some features between Windows and RT.

I never use Timed Loops except in FPGA code as Single Cycle Timed Loops.