Neil Pate

I use Inno Script Studio to generate the actual installer. There is nothing I can actually think of that caught me out, other than it just took some time to figure everything out (like admin rights, banner graphics, unlocking directories etc).

I recently had a lot of problems with using the App Builder to create an installer. In the end I gave up and used Inno Setup and was pleasantly surprised.

Mike, not sure if this will help you, but if you add NI_Appbuilder_logging=TRUE to your LabVIEW.ini file then you will get a comprehensive build log for your .exes and installers. If your installer is failing to build just scroll down to the last line and see if there is a more verbose error message there. The log file is in the same directory as the .lvproj

Hi Lewis, I am also taking my CLED next Tuesday (you taking yours in Newbury, right?) and will probably not be using the sample projects, although I may borrow bits and pieces. You are probably right in that the exam will be quite a close match to the sample project, but I think you would have to spend too much time modifying it to meet the new requirements.

It would be nice if all of the VIs in the NI_WebServices.lvlib were not password protected.

Greg, I do not have 2010 installed either, but here is a picture maybe you can recreate it from this?

Looks neat. Am going to tinker with this .net control too if I get a chance. Just a heads up, I know this was just a proof of concept, but you probably don't want to be creating all those objects inside the loop.

I had so many problems with Dropbox (and SugarSync) trying to sync source/builds across machines I gave up completely and now just rely on my VCS.

Tim, Sorry I have just looked at the screenshot I posted, there is a bug in that the case structure downstream of my variant cache lookup has a False constant wired to it. This was for testing purposes when I was comparing the speed and correctness of the new algorithm. This constant should actually be replaced with the output from the variant attribute lookup. Neil

Hi Tim, I have already cloned the repository, I just wanted to be polite before pushing back my changes. There is actually logic checking the dependency cache, its just before the case structure. If the attribute lookup is not found then it is added, this is how items get in the cache. At the moment I am totally snowed in with work, so I do not think I will get time for several weeks (probably longer) to tinker with this anymore. Unfortunately for the project I was going to use it in has several thousand VIs and performance with this is just a bit too slow, so I ended up writing my own for my particular use case. I am most interested in being able to interact with clone VIs, so I used the FGV method and add the VI names to a cache when they are launched. This works really very well for my application, so is probably about as far as I need to take it for now.

Joe, I was able to fix my issue by re-creating the single VI that was not working properly. Thankfully I have only seen this issue on one occasion, but now several others have also reported very similar problems. This is not a very satisfying situation where you no longer have faith that the code is actually going to do what you tell it to do...

Sorry Chris, never got the the bottom of it. I am glad I had read this thread before it happened to me as otherwise I would have thought I was going crazy! I have a suspicion (based only on a tiny bit of evidence) that the problems arise when renaming class VIs. I am pedantic about having the VI name match what the VI is actually doing, so will often rename a VI as my code/API iterates. Now normally this does not cause any problems, however I have seen instability when I rename a VI to something that a different VI used to be called. It's like there is some form of stale code path somewhere that gets invoked. I did not try cleaning out my VI Object cache, that may have helped... Also, in the past (LV2011) I had some success with a crashing class by erasing the class mutation history. Again I did not try this this time as it was just quicker to recreate the offending VI from scratch and move on.

I usually unbundle and then rebundle. It depends... sometimes I do but it depends on how deep in the call hierarchy the code exists in. If I have a Manager type class then I normally like to not expose the inner working (i.e. private classes) so that the "Block" class never actually gets exposed to the outside world, i.e. there is no get/set "Block" accessor in Executive Functionality. This can be a pain though as it often feels like you are writing the same method for various levels of the hierarchy.

Yeah I also think something is fishy. I know Registry IO is cheap, but I would prefer it not to be going on all the time. Perhaps will try and re-install/repair the License Manager

Didn't know about that option in the LM! Just checked it, and mine is blank (as I would expect as this PC has never been part of a volume license scheme). Hmmm....

Just curious, does anybody know why LabVIEW.exe is querying some Flexlm License Manager registry keys (which do not even exist on my PC) very regularly? See attached picture.

Hi all, If I get time I would like to refactor "Get All VIs in Memory.." that and its parent VI to remove a lot of the duplicate operations and array manipulations. For now though an easy performance boost is to cache the VI Dependencies. I have used variant attributes as a quick and dirty cache, as shown. I get approx 50% speedup for large projects (> 2500 VIs). With a bit of thought I am sure it can also be applied to the other temporary arrays that are used in this VI. Comments? The VI attached is saved in 2013. Get All VIs in Memory Including statically-referenced Reentrant Clones.vi

Today I learned you can pass an I32 into the To Upper Case prim. Did this totally by accident. Has anybody ever used this feature before?

I always put File-->Exit on every application that has a menu-bar, however my personal preference (as others have also said) these days is to handle the Panel close event so I put in both. To me the only no-no is a big fat Exit button on the GUI.

Have you tried running the executable on your PC but with the source directory renamed to something else? This can help diagnose if some VIs/classes etc are not being included in the exe but are on your disk so the built application works fine. Also try move the exe somewhere else (on your PC) as if the application has relative paths to source code VIs it should then fail.

OK point taken. I think my uses of the JKI template are much more localised (maybe the word I am looking for is specialised, but even this does not really convey what I mean, perhaps what I just mean is "simple") so my private data in the shift register is a bit more cohesive. I do not have a cluster-saurus with myriad elements.

So what do you do when you need to execute a reasonably complicated bit of code which requires various bits of "data" in this cluster (i.e. a portion of code that screams out to be made into a sub-VI, which in my opinion is virtually anything non-trivial)? Do you unbundle the specific elements and pass them into a sub VI? I know it may be frowned upon, but by having the cluster typedef'd I then just pass the whole thing into/out of a sub-VI. Of course you could pass in a non-typedef cluster but we know how that is going to end...

It would be nice if the template could include a typedef for the main cluster on the shift register, I normally end up creating one.

Just to chip in here, I recently had the same problem (2013 SP1). Bundling in a "variable" wire did not cause the class output "cluster" to be updated. Bundling in a constant (in this instance it was a string) did cause the "cluster" to be updated correctly. Probably entirely related, editing some code in this class would cause the IDE to hard-crash, so I figure I just managed to get my code in a state that was not consistent. I fixed my problem by deleting the VI that caused the crash and re-creating it from scratch. I think the inconsistency happened when I renamed a class VI to something that had previously existed in that class.

I think this is actually possible in the IDE, but not in built applications.