Building source distribution disconnects VIMs from the owning lvlib

[Gribo]

Hi all, I have a weird problem when building my application.

I have a main application that's compiled into an EXE. This application loads modules during run time.

The modules are built as a source distributions, with the dependencies copied into a common folder (<main app>\support).

The application gets built without an issue, the .EXE works. Once I build a module, the main application breaks, and the reason for it is that few VIMs (and only the VIMs) get disconnected from their .lvlib.

Once I fix these, everything is ok. What can cause this issue?

Thanks.

[Bryan]

In the build specification properties for your executable, what are your settings under "Additional Exclusions"?  Have you changed anything or left them as default?

There is a setting in there that is enabled by default to "Remove unused members of project libraries" with a sub property of "Modify project library file after removing unused libraries".  I'm curious as to whether this could be the cause.

Edited Sunday at 12:35 PM by Bryan

[Gribo]

Here are my build settings:
Main app: 

Module: 

[Gribo]

On 3/23/2025 at 8:34 AM, Bryan said:

In the build specification properties for your executable, what are your settings under "Additional Exclusions"?  Have you changed anything or left them as default?

There is a setting in there that is enabled by default to "Remove unused members of project libraries" with a sub property of "Modify project library file after removing unused libraries".  I'm curious as to whether this could be the cause

That would have disconnected other SubVIs, not just the malleable ones. 

[Bryan]

That's what I would have figured as well, but it was worth a look-see.  

I haven't run into this problem, so I have no personal experience to share as far as a fix.

I do however wonder if the same thing would happen if your modules were built into packed libraries instead of source distributions - but am not sure of whether this would be acceptable for your application. 

Hopefully someone will be able to provide some insight.

[X___]

It might have nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I was recently struggling with the oddities of Source Distribution and libraries, and found out that a bizarre trick fixed my problem:

Maybe you want to try that out.

Just for my enlightenment: why do you want to embed the code in your VIs?

[Gribo]

Thanks, I will write a post build script to add the VIMs back to their .lvlibs. Hopefully, I won't find more of those things.

[Gribo]

On 3/24/2025 at 1:53 PM, X___ said:

Just for my enlightenment: why do you want to embed the code in your VIs?

That's the default setting. I'll try the other two.

[X___]

Actually, you might need the code if you don't have the IDE installed.

I don't think the runtime alone would be able to generate compiled code from the mere diagrams...

[X___]

On 3/24/2025 at 5:35 PM, Gribo said:

Thanks, I will write a post build script to add the VIMs back to their .lvlibs. Hopefully, I won't find more of those things.

The idea is not so much to modify anything to the lvlibs, but merely to copy the original VIs instead of the version LabVIEW generates when releasing the source distribution.

It doesn't make any sense to me, but the fact of the matter is that it works.

I just used the result of the release (which files are saved where) to figure out which original ones I need and where I need to copy them (overwriting the released ones in the process).