LabVIEW "Provider" ini file signature problem(in resource-->framework-->provider)

[xavier30]

Hi,

First off, i don't know if this post is in its correct category, or if the question has been answered before. I have been asking my dear friend google quite a bit but this time he/she unfortunately failed me.

I was playing around with the labview provider interface (in lack of a better name) today, trying to create my own custom right click menus, to launch various labview plugins/scripts.

What i did was taking an existing provider/plugin such as the SCC tool located in <LabVIEW dir>/resource/framework/provider/SCC , copy it, remove everything i didn't need from the toolkit (leaving only the interface vis) and point towards my own custom menu code/vi (using the "provider/API" vis to manipulate the menus) i kept the .ini file (Copy) intact.

This all worked fine and i was ready to take the next step: creating everything from scratch "by my self", but here is where i got into trouble.

What used to work just fine when stealing the SCC interface vis now didn't work at all.

After some debugging i think i have narrowed it down to the signature used in the ini file that one have to add in the custom provider folder.

This is the ini file i used/stole from the SCC folder:

[Provider]

SupportedInterface=SCC_Interface

ProviderInterfaceVI=SCC_Provider_Interface.vi

ItemInterfaceVI=SCC_Item_Interface.vi

GlobalItemInterfaceVI=SCC_Global_Interface.vi

IsPrimary=0

LicenseName=LabVIEW_Pro

LicenseVersion=10.0.0

LicenseRestrictions=DisableDemoIfActivated

InterfaceVersion=1.0

Signature=5X259R73LC93CCTK3LWBRTLJBS52CR9T

My question to the bright people of Lava is the following:

How the (##insert inappropriate words here##) do one generate the "Signature" key/checksum/XXX ???

I was hoping that it would be a MD5 or something similar but the MD5 generator in LabVIEW (file to MD5 thingy) only generates ASCII HEX values and this string (in the Signature field above) contains characters above "F".

Also i don't know/understand for what portion of the file the signature is generated. Is the "Signature" field/line excluded when the calculation is done and then appended to the file?

If anyone could shed some light on this it would be highly appreciated! (i'll bring kudos on next NI week!!)

(P.S i have had a look at Jim's/JKI's "Right click framework" and considered it, but it didn't quite work so well under OS X and Linux as i had hoped + i was really hoping to get some answers for my own understanding on how LabVIEW calls the "providers" to see if my own interpretation so far is correct.)

Regards,

X

[jgcode]

NI signs the ini files but you have to be a member of the LabVIEW Project Providers group.

Currently this is not a public thing however, it seems NI might be heading in that direction in the future.

I would contact NI if you are interested in joining the group (David_L helps run the group).

[xavier30]

Hi jgcode,

Thanks for the feedback!

X

[David_L]

Xavier,

As JG mentioned, the LabVIEW Project Provider framework is a private, unsupported feature. It has traditionally been an NI Internal feature and therefore may not be completely documented and has the possibility of being changed in future versions of LabVIEW. We have recently begun to expose the API to some partners who are creating tools for the LabVIEW Tools Network, but on a case-by-case basis. If you are interested in learning more, please contact the LabVIEW Partner Program team with some information on how you plan on using it. If you have any other specific questions on the provider framework, you can also email us and we'll be glad to answer them the best we can.

David