sdserlin Posted August 7, 2015 Report Share Posted August 7, 2015 Hello, I have to create an installation executable. I have a bunch of old dos programs and supporting files, plus a zip file, and a dosbox executable to install via a LabVIEW VI built into an executable via app builder. The LabVIEW VI needs to copy the old dos programs and supporting files from the project to the user's hard drive and place the files in their correct locations on the users' hard drives. Plus, the LabVIEW VI needs to extract the zip file and launch the dosbox executable to install dosbox. The source of the old dos programs and supporting files, zip file, and dosbox executable needs to be virtual as the users will not have access to my hard drive nor any network mapped drives where the installation files will initially be located. What I cannot figure out is how to call the path and files from the project tree into the LabVIEW VI without getting an error regarding absolute path after I have copied the files from my mapped drive into the a virtual folder in the project tree. Since the user won't have access to my hard drive nor a network drive when this VI is built into an installation application (they will have a usb stick or disk), how do I get around this error? I thought that was the point of the virtual folder so that I did not have to have an absolute path to the source files in the VI. I know that I can include the source files using app builder but that does not address the issue of controlling the installation using the VI. Any thoughts how to accomplish this using LabVIEW, virtual folders, and their project tree? Quote Link to comment
Yair Posted August 9, 2015 Report Share Posted August 9, 2015 I would suggest you not use LV for this. There are dedicated programs for setting up complex installers and you would probably be better off with one of those. In LV, the only real customization is the ability to specify an EXE to call after installation. I have no experience with such programs, but there have been some threads discussing them over the years (I would suggest looking under the relevant category, or searching for "InnoSetup", which is the only name that immediately comes to mind). It also seems to me that you have some confusion about how projects work. They are not some magical file system which takes care of things automatically. They are simply an organizational tool which LV uses. Every item in the project points to a specific file on disk. Virtual folders are simply a tool for grouping items in a way which would be more relevant in that context. Quote Link to comment
eberaud Posted August 9, 2015 Report Share Posted August 9, 2015 InnoSetup is free and awesome, I highly recommend it! 1 Quote Link to comment
ThomasGutzler Posted August 10, 2015 Report Share Posted August 10, 2015 InnoSetup is free and awesome, I highly recommend it! In combination with ISTool Quote Link to comment
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