NI Package Management Idea Exchange

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NI Package Management Idea Exchange


Post your ideas that are related to NI package management. This includes NI Package Manager, NI Package Builder, creating NI packages (.nipkg), distributing NI packages (.nipkg), managing feeds, and more.

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When you create a solution with Ni Package Builder, you have the ability to create a Local Repository for a feed.

Everytime you build it it replace all.

 

For me, we missed a functionnality to update a feed. A feed is able to handle multiple version of a package, if you replace all, you lost the history.

Without this functionnality, you cannot mix sources of the package for the feed. In my case, I have a feed that contains package build with TS deployment tools and packages build with NI Package Builder. To include both packages, I have to build my own tool. If NI Pacakge builder was able to update existing feed, I can build all the packages of my solution and push it to the feed in one way.

 

Just hoping that i will have feedback !!!!

It could be usefull to have authentication capabilities in NIPM in order to create private feeds. Feeds stored on Microsoft Windows folder / shared folders can use Windows authentication but there is nothing available for feeds accessed with HTTP requests.

 

Something like username/password or API Key in HTTP headers, if possible a mechanism to be compatible with all storage plateforms (AWS, Artifactory...).

Hello,

 

I want to distribute my packages with a specific feed. This can be very usefull to distribute application to customer and push updates. But if we use a specific feed, it's not straightforward. We can use the nipkg CLI command to add/remove the feed but it's not so easy to deploy to customer. It's often more easy to request IT to let NI Package Manager to have Admin right than to allow bat file for example.

 

So my idea is to give ability to install a package that also register the feed. After install the package, it can have access to updates more easily. If he uninstall the package it can interresting to unregister the feed. In this way, it can be also easy to update the feed by pushing an update of the package.

 

Note : I tried to do it with pre and post install command without success.

 

Best regards.

 

 

This feature is available in the LabVIEW package builder (very cool!), but it would be helpful to have this exposed in the NI Package Builder UI as well...

 

Currently my work around is to either

(a) Use the SystemLink REST API and (really requires a good development pipeline for automation)

(b) Target the feed at the SystemLink internal repository folder, which will create a "hidden" repository that is unavailable in the SystemLink Browser, but can still be referenced... While not too terrible for testing, this is probably not a great approach from a security point of view...

When installing any package from ni, they are auto registering feeds for themselves and their dependencies. It will be good to add to feature so that when configuring and building a package, we can also specify a feed name and uri. The package will automatically register the feed when installing it, just like package from ni does. 

 

There is really no good way of auto-register a feed when install the package. NIPM API will stuck when running as an post install executable. The executable will be able to execute with no issue when run not at post install. The other way is to directly manipulate with the nipkg.ini which should really be avoided from end user.

When I go to download a new piece of NI software, there is an online installer which:

1) Installs the latest version of NIPM

2) Registers any needed feeds

3) Presents an installer dialog to user

4) Installs product

5) exits gracefully.

 

And is <10 KB in size.

 

It would be incredibly useful to be able to create such an installer through on of the available builder interfaces that points to (for instance) network feeds, or a partner feed, or something like that.

 

There are currently some "work arounds" but they all are rather complex, clunky, and require a level of BAT file execution that's not really easy.

(I could probably do this easier through LV coding, but if the LVRuntime isn't installed, that doesn't really help me :-))

I created a package in LabVIEW 2020 which (obviously) depends on LabVIEW runtime and other things.  When I create the feed from LabVIEW, it includes all of these -- Excellent!

 

I have additional packages that I want to create in NI Package Builder which are add-ons to the LV solution to support a Plugin Architecture.

I can include the LabVIEW package as a dependency (assuming it's installed), but when I create the feed, it does NOT include the nested dependencies.

 

It would be very nice to include an option for dependencies to "Detect and Include dependencies" 

There are situations packages may have conflicts with each other. If we can specify the conflicted packages in the package build spec, It will be very helpful.

 

This is an existing feature on JKI's VI Package Manager. It uninstalls conflicted package with the new install.

there must be a better way to uninstall NIPM without having to uninstall all NI software as a prerequisite, at least that I hope there is

knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000kJ6oSAE&l=en-US

 

do consider allowing NIPM to be uninstalled independently, as I believe most of the pre-NIPM era users have and still require those 8.5-201x LabVIEWs (for maintenance and backward compatibility with legacy hardware) that were already installed properly (with kinks ironed out). NIPM to rebuild the feedlist based on pre-NIPM-install NI software products, maybe? 

It would be great if the feed-download command would accept parameters for:

  • Downloading a feed that's not in the current configuration (feed is in a directory)
  • Including dependencies in the download
  • Including EULAs in the download
  • Including recommended packages in the download
  • Including suggested packages in the download

I ran into an issue where I needed cRIO driver set 19.6 for an older target, I only had 19.1 installed and a whole bunch of newer sets. 

The should be an option to install driver sets (for installation to a target) regardless if newer sets are installed. Not every customer uses the latest and greatest cRIOs.

This may be a "bug" rather than a feature request.

 

But it seems as though when NIPM encounters an error in fetching information from one feed, it aborts checking all feeds...

I can see the benefit of this (if a computer is offline, it would prevent experiencing a time-out for 50+ feeds), but in some cases it becomes VERY difficult to install new software from feeds.

 

For instance:

-  Computer is loaded with NI software online.

-  Computer is installed at customer site, or into IT network, and is removed from outside communications

-  New LAN feed is registered for "custom" software

 

NIPM will not see any of the custom software because it errors out on the public feeds.  Work arounds are:

- Download and explicitly install packages

- Unregister ALL internet feeds (a non-obvious process, particularly for the NIPM feeds), reregister local feeds, try again.

 

It would be nice if there was some option I could enable that says "ignore errors and proceed with feed update"... or something.