LabVIEW 6.1 vs. LabVIEW 7.1 RTE Installers

[Tim Erickson]

I just upgraded from LabVIEW 6.1 to 7.1. In the past we built an application with the Application Builder and then built an installer using InstallShield. The installer looks to see if LVRTE is installed using its product code and then installs it if need be. However, after upgrading, the installer cannot determine if LVRTE 7.1 is installed using the product code of LVRTE 7.1. In addition, if I try and run the installer for LVRTE 7.1 manually I get an error

telling me that a higher version of the product is already installed. Also, the LVRTE no longer appears individually in "Add/Remove Programs" but under a generic "NI Software" heading. Using the LVRTE merge module will not work for us because we will have multiple applications installed on one pc and we cannot risk crippling them all if one is removed due to the LVRTE being removed.

Does anyone know what changed between the LabVIEW 6.1 and LabVIEW 7.1 RTE msi files?

Thanks!

[Michael Aivaliotis]

Why bother checking if it exists? Also, you should just install all the required files yourself instead of calling the NI msi file. I've been doing this for years and have never had problems with my apps not working. By doing this, you let the run-time files become part of your application setup. In order to see what needs to be installed from the run-time, just install the run-time on a virgin machine and take a look at the attached image.

[Tim Erickson]

Sounds a good idea. Have you done a similar thing with NI-DAQ?

[Tim Erickson]

Do you use InstallShield?

This is more of an InstallShield question now but may be of interest to other LabVIEW developers.

How do you determine what component code to assign to each individual DLL? These DLL's are shared by all LabVIEW applications and therefore the removal of one application cannot remove the DLL until its refcount in the registry is 0. Do you let InstallShield assign the component code when you build the first installer and then use that component code for each additional LabVIEW application that you deploy? Should the same component code be used that NI used?

One more question, does the LabVIEW Runtime Installer put anything in the windows directory or system32 directory?

Thanks!

[Michael Aivaliotis]

I use Installshield Express so I don't have to go and fiddle with each component code. All I have to do is tell Installshield Express that this is a shared library so it is handled automatically. Then when it is uninstalled then the refcounting is handled as you said.