FRC Teams Supporting FLL and FTC

[Jon236]

I noticed that the new FTC and FLL software requires LabVIEW 2009 to run.  Since FRC teams currently have 8.5.1 and will upgrade (as I understand) to a custom version of 8.6 for 2010,  how will FRC teams support the FTC and FLL efforts?  Is there a way to run 2 different versions of LV on one laptop?

[MarkBlack]

Jon,

You can have multiple version of LabVIEW installed on the same system. Here is a snap shot of my C:\Program Files\National Instruments directory.

Let us know if you have any more questions. 

[Jon236]

So I can install 8.6 over my current FRC install and then simply select which to use?  There won't be issues with 8.6 writing over 8.5 libraries?

[MarkBlack]

When you install LabVIEW 8.6 the installer by default will install LabVIEW.exe (8.6) and its support files into C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.6.  The C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.5 directory will remain on disk unchanged.  Items such as drivers are shared between the two version of LabVIEW, but each will retain their own VI library (vi.lib), which contains WPILib.  Since each of these libraries are located within their respective LabVIEW install location they will not effect each other and one is not overwritten by the other. 

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.5\vi.lib

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.6\vi.lib

When you open a VI on disk with two or more versions of LabVIEW installed the VI automatically opens in the last opened version of LabVIEW. 

[Jon236]

Thank you for your prompt attention to my question!