using JSONText from JDP Secience runtime error in PPL with Find Item (as LVtype).vim

[MichaelS78]

It took me several days and hundreds of builds to fix error 1003 in a PPL.  

The error happens if i have Find Item (as LVtype).vim in my code but it is fine if i use Find Item.vi with From JSON Text.vim

Even worse! calling the built PPL from a labview app in dev works fine.

Opening the main module of the PPL works fine.

Calling the PPL as a plugin from an exe fails with error 1003.

Using LabVIEW 2018 32 bit.  

was I missing something to not know about this? i can find no reason or difference!

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Hi Michael,

I resonate with your frustration. PPLs are notoriously unreliable. Multiple LabVIEW users, myself included, have reported buggy, unexplained behaviour when working with PPLs.

Darren Nattinger used to recommend avoiding PPLs in his excellent Ludicrous Ways To Fix Broken LabVIEW Code presentation. Please find below two different recordings of his presentation:

• Recording 1: LUDICROUS ways to Fix Broken LabVIEW Code with Darren Nattinger | GDevConNA 2022
• Recording 2: GLA Summit 2022: Ludicrous Ways to Fix Broken LabVIEW Code

For these reasons I have avoided using PPLs for several years now. This is sad, as PPLs have amazing benefits when they work. The following excellent presentation highlights PPLs' strong points: PPLs and Packages to Enhance Application Performance and Deployment - Matthias Baudot - GDevCon#1 .

Having said all this, I believe that reliability improvements have been made to PPLs in the last few versions of LabVIEW. I also believe that further PPL reliability improvements will arrive in the LabVIEW 2026 Q3 version that might become available before the end of this month (July, 2026). In short, you might want to try the same thing you are doing now in LabVIEW 2026 Q3 when it becomes available.

The following is another excellent presentation about PPLs, which highlights that it is possible to be successful with PPLs: Against Darren’s advice: Being successful with PPLs as shared components - Jens Andersen - GDevCon#5

[Kyle97330]

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@MichaelS78 wrote:

Using LabVIEW 2018 32 bit.  

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I don't want to say definitively that this is the problem, but LabVIEW 2018 was only the second version to support the Malleable feature, and there have been multiple patch notes that have addressed error 1003 (2023 Q3 Patch 1 and 2025 Q1 Patch 1 for sure, possibly others).

I know that if you're using 2018 now you're likely stuck there for a good reason, but I think you have to look at this as something you just may have to live without, feature-wise, until you can update... and possibly not even then. 

I've also seen "Ludicrous Ways To Fix Broken LabVIEW Code" and agree that using PPLs often creates more problems than it solves.  But if you do want to use it then it's best to use it without any other potentially problematic coding involved at the same time, which includes VIMs, especially in 2018.

[jyoung8711]

I have seen similar errors around mixing/matching PPLs & VIMs.  I think I specifically have dealt with errors around the VIMs inside of the JSONText kit as well.

I use PPLs extensively in plugin & reuse libraries. When I've encountered these in the past, most surefire way to fix it is to just remove the VIMs (e.g., replace it with the contents on the block diagram) -- it can be a pain but it pretty much always will get the problem resolved.

I've had limited success in the PPL build properties with things like including Block Diagrams, or forcing the build to include libraries, etc... but I (personally) don't have a silver bullet for that.

Since I moved my "base" reuse PPLs to 2020 I have had fewer errors, and supposedly there have been some additional improvements in 2024+ but I personally can't speak to that at the moment.

[MichaelS78]

Thank you for these replies! I think it's time to move to a newer version. I'll try building the whole application in 2023 or newer and post back. Thanks for the comments!  It's a bit crazy that  some vims work and some don't 🙂