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.

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?)

With the NI Package Manager we can now create packages for a variety of purposes (libraries, tools, APIs, stand-alone applications, plugins...).

 

However, there's currently a limitation with the dependencies. For example, if you want to create a .nipkg file that relies on the LabVIEW Runtime Engine that successfully deploys to any PC, you have 2 choices:

- manually install the LV RTE from NIPM on the deployment machine

- add the LV RTE (and your app) to a custom feed, and manually add that feed to NIPM on the deployment machine.

 

In any case, there's a manual operation for a user. This is because NIPM does not automatically search for NI feeds when installing a custom package (it only looks into already installed feeds).

 

There should be (at least) an option like this in NIPM (ideally it should be the default behavior)!

NIPM Options.png

 

This way, NIPM would behave pretty much like any other package manager (think Linux or mobile platforms)...

 

Useful links:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/SystemLink/Use-the-NI-feeds-to-find-package-dependencies/td-p/3811361

https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-Package-Management/NI-Package-Management-Portal-READ-THIS-FIRST/ta-p/3805952

 

--Eric

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. 

We should be able to filter the Packages displayed by Feed. This would allow users to focus on their internal feeds and find packages quicker. Particularly when basic LabVIEW\TestStand shows 90+ packages (300+ with hidden shown), the drowns out the internal packages. This would allow for more categorization than the Maintainer and limited Categories (improvement idea) afford us currently.

2019-07-25_11h45_46.png

GitHub Releases is a place where we can host downloadable packages for our projects.

 

NI is already using it:

https://github.com/ni/niveristand-scan-engine-ethercat-custom-device/releases/

 

Each package is given a nice clear URL like
https://github.com/ni/niveristand-scan-engine-ethercat-custom-device/releases/download/v19.0.0/ni-scan-engine-veristand-2018-support_19.0.0.11_windows_all.nipkg

 

How nice it would be if my NIPM feed could point to GitHub-hosted packages! This way, I don't need to maintain my own file server. I created a custom feed to try it out; this is what my Packages.gz contains:

 

Architecture: windows_all
CompatibilityVersion: 190006
Description: Provides support for the NI Scan Engine and EtherCAT custom device for NI VeriStand 2018.
DisplayName: NI Scan Engine and EtherCAT for VeriStand 2018
DisplayVersion: 19.0.0
Eula: eula-ni-standard
Filename: https://github.com/ni/niveristand-scan-engine-ethercat-custom-device/releases/download/v19.0.0/ni-scan-engine-veristand-2018-support_19.0.0.11_windows_all.nipkg
Homepage: http://www.ni.com
LanguageSupport: en
MD5sum: be9d301d98465ac3157fbb8b6cee370b
Maintainer: National Instruments <support@ni.com>
Package: ni-scan-engine-veristand-2018-support
Plugin: file
Priority: standard
Section: Add-Ons
Size: 38198876
UserVisible: yes
Version: 19.0.0.11

 

 

Alas, although NIPM accepted the feed, it did not allow the package to be downloaded ("Redirection to another URL is forbidden"):

 

nipkg-redirection-forbidden.png

 

It turns out that the nice URL above actually redirects to an Amazon cloud storage location, and the final URL is like

https://github-production-release-asset-2e65be.s3.amazonaws.com/150638172/d0544200-8d25-11e9-9a52-585a4992b432?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWNJYAX4CSVEH53A%2F20190701%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20190701T040716Z&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Signature=c830c14d99beb20df55c4fbabb756d3e179953224b70c1fc7cc021cf74bca9f0&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&actor_id=2548865&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dni-scan-engine-veristand-2018-support_19.0.0.11_windows_all.nipkg&response-content-type=application%2Foctet-stream

 

Could the restriction on redirections be lifted somehow? Perhaps there could be an optional property in the feed to specify that a particular Filename is allowed to redirect elsewhere. Perhaps the feed creator can nominate one or more "whitelisted" domains for a particular Filename's redirection.

 

(originally posted in the NIPM forum)

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, -? ). 

When creating NI Packages with NI Package Builder, you are currently stuck with the limited set of categories/sections. It would help if we could customize this field.

With the removal of the Browse Products in NIPM 20.6, the main software download page should have search box that searches just the downloads. It would help replicate the older NIPM experience to quickly help people find the software that are wanting to install.

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 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.

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.