VeriStand directory structure after deployment

[joedowdle]

Hey everyone,

I have a custom device that when built includes some text files that it will reference in the data folder when built and I am not sure where on the RT target the text will be loaded to when VeriStand is deployed with this custom device.  Is there a resource that talks about the directory structure on a RT remote target using VeriStand?  If not, does anyone know where these files will be or how the directory structure is organized?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Jarrod_S. · Accepted solution]

Your custom device can have complete control over which files get deployed to the target and where those files get deployed to on the RT target file system. I would take a look at this Custom Device function to add a dependent file. You specify the location of the file on the host and the location on the RT target where you would like the file to get deployed to.

[joedowdle]

That sounds like it would work perfectly for my application.  One more question though - what part of your custom device should this VI be included in?  The initialization VI or what?  Thanks again.

[Jarrod_S.]

Any part you like. It can be the initialization VI or one of the pages. I suppose it depends on whether the set of files to be deployed is static or whether the user needs to choose some option that affects it. It it's static, then putting it in the Initialization VI is perfectly fine.

[joedowdle]

It is static.  All I need to do is read the numbers out of a file and multiply/add them to an input to get an output.

Question though - I'm not sure which of these directories each of these actually refer to.  I read the descriptions in the help, but I always have issues matching up directories without using absolute paths.  I want to use relative paths as to make the program more flexible if someone uses a different directory structure than I do.  Right now when I build my custom device it puts the text files in ...custom devices\customdevicename\data\filename.txt  Which one of those choices coincide with that?  Thanks.

[Jarrod_S.]

It looks like the best option is To Common Data Dir. This resolves to: <Public Documents>\National Instruments\NI VeriStand XXXX, where XXXX is the version year. So in your case, the relative path you listed starting at Custom Devices would be all you'd need to add with this as the base.

[h_yong]

Hi,

Where does one typically set the location of the custom device on the RT target? Is this specified in the XML file, or in a build specification parameter somewhere? I haven't found the place to specify this yet. Thanks.

[Kilometers]

You specify the file location of a custom device on a Real-Time system in the XML with the "RealTimeSystemDestination" tag.