Add NI Software as Dependency in Created Package

[mbremer]

Hi,

I'm currently developing an application that will be deployed to a number of cRIOs using SystemLink. So far I've created an real-time application build spec in my LabVIEW project, and a package that points to it (plus another custom package that we've created). I don't see an option to add NI software as a dependency in my package however. I'd like to have a single package that can be installed and allows SystemLink to install all required NI software as well (i.e. NI-RIO). I can see all the NI software in the SystemLink Systems Manager available to install, but don't know how to add as a dependency in LabVIEW while creating the package. Is there something I'm missing? Do I need to do something to make the NI package feed visible when creating a package in LV?

[JoshuaP · Accepted solution]

From the Systems Manager manager software view in SystemLink click on the column to show the "Package Name" similar to the image below.

Then in the LabVIEW package build spec for your RT target, click on the Dependencies tab and click the small folder icon from the lower left to add a dependency.  You will need to specify the "Package Name" as show from SystemLink.

[mbremer]

Great, thanks! One additional question - if I have a cRIO without SystemLink installed and I try to manually install the package using opk, will the cRIOs be subscribed to repositories that contain the NI software, or is this something that is on;y available if you have a SystemLink server accessible?

[JoshuaP]

No, currently installing SystemLink is the only thing that adds the feeds to the target for the packages for the other NI components.  If you don't install SystemLink it will most likely fail with an error saying it was not able to find the package.  In addition, I wouldn't recommend mixing and matching MAX CDF-based installs with package based installs.  The 2 systems don't know about one another so files will get randomly overwritten or cause installs to fail.

This is something that NI is working on resolving and will hopefully be fixed in the future, such that you can do package based installs for cRIO in MAX or SystemLink without concerns of messing each other up.

[wrkcrw00]

What if there are drivers that are not yet packaged and available in SystemLink? Most are, but not everything is. Are you saying that if I need those things, I should stick with the MAX install for everything?

[JoshuaP]

If your application requires any NI components that aren't available in packages yet,  you would have to continue using MAX install for all of the NI components, but could use SL for installing your application with the limitation that you can't specify dependencies on the NI components.

We are currently "targeting" having everything converted over to packages for the 20.0 release.

[wrkcrw00]

What is the "targeted" date for 20.0?

[JoshuaP]

The target for 20.0 is in May.