LabVIEW version merge

[BowenM]

Every year a new LabVIEW comes out... and every year I find myself thoroughly annoyed as I reinstall / move all of my packages, libraries, etc.  And, every year I think "there HAS to be a better way to do this - but I don't have time right now to figure it out".

SO... has anyone know of (or has written) a tool to automate this process?  VIPM works for some of them, but not everything

[billko]

Well... no one is twisting your arm (as far as I can tell) to install the latest greatest LabVIEW.  😉

When I was a young gun, I used to live on the bleeding edge.  Nowadays, I just want something that works, so I let the young guns bleed while I watch and wait.

Of course, that only delays the pain of reinstalling stuff for all your stuff for the new version - but at least you have an idea of what installs well and what doesn't.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to your problem.  😞

[Bob_Schor]

You could do it the "LabVIEW way", namely install all of your packages and Libraries inside the LabVIEW 20xx folder in Program Files x86\National Instruments, probably as sub-folders in user.lib.  It seems (to me) that when I load an older (say LabVIEW 2014) VI in a more recent (say LabVIEW 2016) version, force-converting it when I save the file, the library routines are not similarly converted.  In addition, I've noticed that a number of utilities that I use (including some NI supporting routines, like those in the Report Generation Toolkit) are converted the first time I call them and save the calling file, as though older versions were in the newer libraries, only getting converted when used/saved.  This suggests to me that this technique might actually work ...

Bob Schor

[BowenM]

---

@billko wrote:

Well... no one is twisting your arm (as far as I can tell) to install the latest greatest LabVIEW.  😉

When I was a young gun, I used to live on the bleeding edge.  Nowadays, I just want something that works, so I let the young guns bleed while I watch and wait.

Of course, that only delays the pain of reinstalling stuff for all your stuff for the new version - but at least you have an idea of what installs well and what doesn't.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to your problem.  😞

---

This is an age old argument 🙂  I personally like to install early so that if something doesn't work I know right away. This lets look for a solution before it becomes critical... and if nothing breaks with the new version I get to start playing with new toys early!

I've tried the whole "copy <install directory>\user.lib\,  \instr.lib\, etc" before.  It again catches some of my libraries, but not everything - especially when we're talking about NI libraries like VeriStand and TestStand APIs.

I gave up this time and just installed everything manually.  It sure would be nice to have a way to "export" libraries and settings so that when I move versions, upgrade computers, install on a new computer, etc I don't need to spend a few hours installing packages and configuring LV.