selecting NI-VISA runtime in distribution kit requires NI Vision CD

[ebalci]

Well, the subject tells it all actually.

I have a project I previously distributed.

I had made some changes over it, so that it can find available RS-232 ports on the machine it is running.

For this purpose I used some VISA functions like viFindRsrc, etc.

After finished coding it came to creating the dist kit.

The tool automatically added a check mark to the VISA runtime in the drivers tab, as expected.

However, the location to get the VISA runtime was set as "NI Vision Acquisition 8.5 CD1" and it refused to build it without that CD.

I managed to find it from my CD box and fed it to the tool.

At a slightly later phase of dist kit build, it also required the "NI Vision Development Module 8.6" !

Fortunately I had that at hand, too.

But the confusing part is I am not using any NI Vision functions in that code. Only a GUI and some RS-232+VISA calls.

I built vision apps before in my computer but these should be independent I suppose!

Now I have a 50 MB dist kit for a very simple project.

Note: I had VISA runtime 4.2. I upgraded it to 4.3 from a CD before building the thing with Vision library CD's.

After that upgrade, the file path for the VISA runtime in the drivers tab changed to that CD's label.

I thought that fixed the problem but it still continued asking for the Vision CD's! 

Message Edited by ebalci on 05-01-2010 08:10 PM

[ebalci]

Update to the problem above;

The dist kit (which required NI Vision Acq and Vision Development Module (VDM)  CD's to add NI-VISA to the installation) installed successfully, but the application did not work.

It does some VISA resource checking during startup.

It probably fails at this point. No GUI shown, just becomes "Not responding" in the task manager.

So, actually there were no VISA in the installation pack.

I prepared a new kit without VISA and installed the VISA manually. Only then the application started fine.

What do you think confused the dist kit builder's mind, such that it thinks (and does not forget) that VISA is available in those Vision products ??

[Mert_A.]

It is not unexpected or uncommon for the distribution build process to require some unintuitive source distributions. For details, see the first part of this thread. In short, we may need to copy something from those Vision disks (but not Vision itself).

I would not assume that the distribution you initially built did not contain the VISA runtime support. Did you verify this by checking the Windows Add/Remove Programs list, or checking the filesystem for installed VISA files? There may be some other reason your application did not initially run properly. Perhaps the system needed a reboot for some service to run?

After building a distribution, if you look in the Volume\bin directory, you will find many subdirectories corresponding to the various components included in the distribution. I suspect that if you look at the names of the .msi files in those directories, you'll find the VISA runtime support in there.

If you investigate further, please do let me know what you discover.

Mert A.

National Instruments

[ebalci]

Hi Mert, thank you for the reply.

- For my dist kit, I left only 3 components selected in components tab: CVI run time + low level support + VISA runtime

- Yes, I checked the machine for VISA folders when I was called in. They were not there.

- The add/remove programs window showed only the CVI runtime as National Instruments Software

- I had tried the installation on my machine, it worked, probably since I had VISA already.

- The installer did not prompt for a restart, so I did not try it.

The seperate installation of VISA runtime also did not also prompt for a restart and it made things work without one.

- After the suspicious build with Vision CD's, I deliberately checked that Volume\bin folder there were a dp folder and p0, p1, ... folders.

None had the NIVISAruntime.msi file (the file which I found from another NI CD to install it seperately).

And a question: The capability of adding merge modules only excepts .msm files.

Isn't there one for NI-VISA? I thought it could solve my problem, searched for it, but could not find.

Message Edited by ebalci on 07-01-2010 08:05 AM

[Mert_A.]

This does sound like some incorrect behavior, then. I'd like to have you generate a debug log for me to look at. Follow the steps in my post here, then please zip that log file up along with your built distribution and the corresponding .cds file. Please post the zipped file to ftp://ftp.ni.com/incoming. That ought to give me a lot more information to figure out what is going on.

Regarding your other question, a merge module is by definition a .msm file. NI does not have merge modules for many of its drivers/components. That feature is intended to allow users to merge in third party .msm files, or ones that they have authored themselves.

Mert A.

National Instruments

[Mert_A.]

Actually, I would suggest posting to our FTP site on Monday, as I will be gone tomorrow, and the FTP site gets cleaned out on a regular basis.