Running windows C# program without installing NI DAQ

[claponsie]

I tried working a support engineer at NI to containerize the driver.  After reaching out to an engineer at NI who specializes in the DAQmx drivers, we concluded that it is not possible to fully containerize the driver because of the level it operates at on the OS.  We are currently looking into LabJack, which has an officially supported docker base image, but seems to only support Linux.

https://github.com/labjack/ljm_docker

[t.kendall]

Bummer, there goes my hopes for a real integration test.  Thanks for the info. 

[NathanGilbert]

Heya, I'm currently working through this myself and trying to integrate this DLL for some basic CI/CD operations in Gitlab, but no dice so far. Anybody have a solution to this utilizing these DLLs in a docker container or CI pipeline? 

I would love to be able to build a NuGET package directly from my pipeline that references these DLLs but of course, can't get the project to build because of the reference. 

[claponsie]

For my CI pipeline, I ended up hosting a dedicated agent and installing MeasurementStudio on the agent.  My pipelines run on that agent.  I'm using Azure btw.

I recall it was harder to get NI Analysis to build than DAQmx because of the licensing.

[NathanGilbert]

That makes sense actually as a decent solution. Is the agent running Windows Server or a full-fledge windows desktop install? Just curious if I can get by with the smaller install. 

[claponsie]

Yeah it works OK.  I'd prefer to run it the build in a container for obvious reasons but this was a good compromise.  The agent is running on Windows Server 2019 Datacenter.