This seems like something that should be easy to do.

I just received the latest Control Edition Developer Suite. The normal process for getting the latest versions of the toolkits installed is a real hassle. Most of them won’t let you install the tools into more than a single version of LabVIEW, even if you have multiple versions of LabVIEW installed. You first have to uninstall the tool, then reinstall the new version and try to copy all of the newly installed files to other versions of LabVIEW that you need the tool in. I currently have LabVIEW 5.1, 6i, 6.1, 7.0 and 7.1 installed. I need them all to support customers that are still running those old versions.

The Signal Processing toolkit installs correctly. When you run the setup, it finds all versions of LabVIEW that it supports, and can just add itself to any versions it’s not currently installed in.

The Database Toolkit must first be uninstalled, but then doing a ‘Complete’ install will install to all supported versions.

Internet Toolkit and Statistical Process Control Toolkits setups can be run multiple times to install into multiple versions of LabVIEW. Not too bad, but could be better.

All other toolkits I have will only let you install into a single instance of LabVIEW. If you run the setup and the tool is already installed, the only choices you have are to Repair or Uninstall.

The attached document shows all of the files I could find that need to be copied and what version of the tool supports what version of LabVIEW. I did make a utility that would copy all the files for the Report Generation and PID Toolkits to all other versions of LabVIEW, but they now need to be updated since the Report Tool has changed and new ones are needed for the new tools.

Ed Dickens

Added ver. 3.1 of the Sound and Vibration Toolkit to the document.

Ed

So I guess your wish is that NI improve the toolkit installation procedure?

I find the Report Generation for MS Office to be a real pain. The problem becomes worse when you have to support a customer that has a different version of MSOffice. How do you handle this? Also, why would you uninstall the old version if you need to support it in older LabVIEW versions like 6.1 etc.?

I have some experience with building installshield setup files and know for a fact that it is possible to handle these upgrade issues simply by modifying the installation script. You can perform checks to see what is already installed and place things where they belong.

If NI doesn't want to do this then they can release a new version of the toolkit for each new version of LV. This way you would know exactly what to install where. I also wouldn't mind to have NI require me to run the installation multiple times for each LabVIEW version. That would be the most straight forward approach and the easiest to implement on their part.

These tools are supposed to make our job easier. But these installation and support problems we deal with each time a version change comes along makes me avoid using the report generator functions for MS Office.

They could improve this process.

Also guess what. The PDA module purchased for version 7 does not work for version 7.1 and the subscription service to the developer suite does not include free upgrades to this module. So just over one year after purchasing the PDA module we get to maintain yet another version of LabVIEW and save as a previous version any new application we want to load on a PDA

Ed, here (attached) is a spec file that will package NI's PID Control Toolkit, if its installed.



This won't work with the current release of the OpenG Package Builder, since the package builder does not allow pathroots in the Source Directory of a File Group. I will re-release a new version of the OGPI that does support this feature, so that the ni_control.spec file will build correctly.

I can work with you to create spec files for all the toolkits, which will allow you to create your own OpenG Packages, from the installed toolkits. You can, oviously, only distribute the OpenG Packages inside your organization, insofar as you have appropriate software licenses for the toolkits.

Regards,

-Jim

The idea I had for doing this would work like this.

You install the tool normally into the oldest version of LabVIEW that the tools supports. Then run the tool and it would copy all the needed files to whatever other versions of LabVIEW you specify.

This would allow you to build the tools and distribute them without worrying about licensing since whoever uses it wold have to have the tools to start with.

I actually did this with the older versions of the RGTK and the PID toolkits, but they do not work with the latest versions.

Ed