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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Stop forcing is to use the website. It is basically impossible to find anything.

 

Restore the browse functionality to NIPM.

As I have come to using NI Package Manager (NIPM) more, I have come across a few user experience issues that need to be improved for NIPM. This is mostly centered around downgrading package version. Most of these are currently available in VI Package Manager

 

  1. For installed packages, you cannot downgrade/change versions of the package. To do this, you must first uninstall the package so you can select the version you want from the Packages screen. (Installed packages are removed from the Packages screen's listing.) There should be at least an option to show the installed packages on the Packages screen so a new version can be selected. It would not hurt to have the ability to select version(s) on the Installed and Updates as well.
  2. On the Updates screen, we should be able to select the available versions if there multiple upgrades available.
  3. If you install a package that requires a downgrade in a dependency, currently NIPM does not let you install that package. It can be down via the NIPKG command line interface (CLI). There should be at least an option/prompt to allow the downgrade. This capability seems to be able to be added by NI as I was prompted to Allow Downgrade/Removal when I updated InstrumentStudio last year. Our packages should be able to do this prompting as well. At least there could be an option added to NIPM that would allow downgrades/uninstalls so that this could be done via the GUI. Also the dialog could give more information about what specifically the issue is.

Too generic message without any recourseToo generic message without any recourse

C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NI Package Manager\packages is a black hole. Files enter but never leave -- my PC has collected so many old (and now-useless) packages over the years, e.g.

 

  • ni-package-manager_17.5.0.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
  • ni-package-manager_18.0.1.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
  • ni-package-manager_18.0.2.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
  • ni-package-manager_18.5.1.49152-0+f0_windows_x64.nipkg
  • ni-package-manager_19.0.0.49152-0+f0_windows_all.nipkg
  • ni-package-manager_19.6.0.49152-0+f0_windows_all.nipkg

 

It is safe to delete these. If NIPM needs to re-install the package, it simply re-downloads them.

 

Please add a way on the NIPM GUI for users to easily clear the package cache. Bonus points if there's an option to retain the versions that are currently installed (I believe NI Package Builder grabs the packages from this folder?)

The old installer had an option to remove all NI Software via the command line:

Automating Uninstallation of NI Software - National Instruments
https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019LfWSAU&l=en-US

 

While the nipk  command line interface has the "remove" option there is no "remove all" feature. It is only possible to remove single packages.

It would be very helpful to be able have an option to only repair the selected package. Typically the issue I have been seeing is with a single package that failed a post-install/post-install all action. Repair will go all they way back the hierarchy, which is unneeded in this case and take much longer leading to additional down time. They should be able to just repair the single package; the default being the current full hierarchy repair is fine, but there must be an option. The workaround of uninstalling and reinstalling the package is also problematic as mentioned in several other issues, since you are forced to uninstall all packages that depend on this package. 

Let's say you have a really busy day and you need to test an application, but you need to install the LabVIEW or any other application like Test stand, for example, you go to your computer and use the Package Manager to install it. Then you have to go to another office, meanwhile, you let Package Manager take care of the installation that takes around 4-5 hours.

 

When you are back ready to run that test you found that there is an error saying that you have not stored available to install the software, and you wonder why NIPM did not check that requirement? There are literally thousands of software that have always performed that check before the installation some of then show a warning or they simply do not allow to start the installation. We really need this on NIPM.

 

Please help me with these guys.

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...).

Because I have the situation below posted in the forums, I thought it would be a great improvement to down-rev a package without first having to un-install said package and end up removing packages that list the subject as a dependency.  That way if I ran into an issue with an update, I could easily revert to the previous package without affecting any other packages.

 

Thanks!

 

DGriffithJr

 

 

https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-Package-Manager-NIPM/I-want-to-uninstall-a-package-and-NOT-uninstall-its-dependencies/m-p/4041272#M423

 

When you have an update available for a package, you cannot access the details of the package. So you don't have access to the detils of the update. You must manually find the corresponding package in the product view and select the version to install to have access to the details.

 

At least a way to access to the product details page from the available update page.

It would be helpful to be able to define additional Categories/Sections for NI Packages. This would help users quickly narrow down searches to find packages. This is needed since there is not a way to filter the packages by feed in NI Package Manager.

 

Current NI Package Categories/Sections

2019-07-08_14h18_38.png

[Edit: 2022-May-10] Moving to LabVIEW Idea Exchange as NI Package Manager and NI Package Builder support custom category values.

I've been informed by NI support that current versions of LabVIEW can only be installed silently by installing Package Manager first and then using batch scripts for installation. Previous versions of labview supported silent installation using typical msiexec flags. The current tool, INSTALL.EXE only supports a passive switch which requires an interactive gui for it to successfully run an installer with application options other that the Package Manager. This is far from an ideal situation for mass deployment to computer labs and it ends up causing a waste of time and effort. Please add silent installation options to install.exe and add the ability for INSTALL.EXE to show installation parameters when it is passed some sort of common help parameter (such as --help, -h, -? ). 

Allow uninstall packages where pre/post uninstall actions fail. Right now, if the package has been created with an error in the pre / post uninstall action, then the package can't be uninstalled - the user is stuck with this package and can't even upgrade it.

If a package fails to install, there is never anything helpful presented to try to diagnose the problem. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

image (8).png

 

This is hot garbage.

 

I end up having to run nipkg.exe from command line to get some modicum of feedback, but even then it's usually still insufficient.

 

My latest use case is that I have created a pre-install.bat file (configured to run as a pre-install custom execute, per my package build spec), and that bat file is intended to throw an error (set nonzero return code and route message to stderr) if some required dependencies do not exist. I went to the trouble of doing these sanity checks and building meaningful errors, but they don't actually get exposed when I run the installer, so I'm left guessing as to what went wrong.

Why is NI Package Manager's GUI the only Windows program I have seen that does not support Alt+F4 as a close application keyboard shortcut? It would be nice if there was at least some keyboard shortcut to close the GUI. It is a bit annoying since every other NI application supports this.

There should be a refresh button added to the NI Package Manager GUI. There is the ability to refresh the listings by pressing the F5 key, but that is not discover-able by the user other than blindly trying the defacto key.

NI Packages have attributes for Homepage and Maintainer's Email as listed in the control file. It would be nice to at least have an option to display the information in NI Package Manager.

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 :-))

During installation, we cannot minimize NI Package Manager (NIPM) window even if the window has "_" button at top right of the screen.

I guess this is because the instalaltion window is set to "modal" so, we cannot touch NIPM window.

 

In addition, we cannot move NIPM window. The window hides my desktop icons so, it's annoying.

What: installing a package on a newly installed machine where only NIPM has been installed. Dependencies to e.g. DAQmx Runtime and Labview Runtime

The problem: the installation will fail as NI Package Manager does not know the feed locations for the dependent packages. If these packages had been installed previous and uninstalled, then the feeds would be known and the installation could pass.

Proposed solution: Whenever a package requires NI products as dependencies, the Package Manager should automatically search / add the feeds from NI.com and install them

I find myself installing for virtual machines often lately and I'm trying to minimize installation of packages that aren't needed for the sake of space. It would be great to have a way to deselect all of the support packages for various IDEs. For example, if I only work in .NET, let me deselect LabVIEW support. I currently only develop in LabVIEW and scrubbing the list for all of the C or .NET support packages is super tedious.

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