Disable Run When Opened

[SteveChandler]

This idea is simple. I would like a setting under Tools/Options to disable run when opened. I posted a similar idea for safe mode which was declined as a duplicate because it was very much like Altenbach's sandbox idea.

This is not a duplicate of either. I just want to disable run when opened in my LabVIEW ini file. Maybe it is a duplicate of something I did not find?

Of all the VIs I have written there is not a single one that is set to run when opened. I download a lot of code from the forums and more than once I have run into a VI that was posted with run when opened turned on. That really scares me and each time it happens I feel like I dodged a bullet!

What I will probably do short term is set up a virtual machine for things like opening VIs from the net.

[tst]

There are some cases where RWO is useful (such as for VIs called from the menus or some utilities which you use often). You could try starting to make all kinds of exceptions, but you would never be guaranteed to get all corner cases.

[Mr.Mike]

I think that this should disable running when not programmatically opened.  I agree that it's a bit scary to open a file and have it execute potentially damaging code.  This ought to resolve tst's issue.

[SteveChandler]

tst brings up a good point. None of my VIs have RWO enabled but I would hate it if some of the utilities I use such as VIPM and CCT broke. I would not mind if the disable RWO ini option only disabled it when not programmatically opened. tst, would that work?

That said I usually do not do a complete code audit before running downloaded code. At least that would be partially my fault if I ran some unknown code that overwrote my drive or replaced some common VI in vi.lib with a trojan

I will be installing a virtual machine for non-development work.

[tst]

Ignoring this setting for VIs run from the menus would not help, because it doesn't handle cases such as utilities which you do open directly and don't want to have to run manually and probably all kinds of other cases.

Like I said in the other idea, one option for dealing with this is having a list of folders where this would apply (the temp folder would be one of those, so that should apply for VIs opened directly from the browser), but I think I agree with Altenbach that having a completely separate instance is preferable.

[SteveChandler]

Even if things broke with RWO disabled I would still like to disable it for when I am opening unknown VIs. I could just turn it back on if I really found that I needed it. Maybe it could even be a toolbar button.

I do like the sandbox idea better. I proposed this one because I thought it would be much easier to implement and it does at least something for safety.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 4 kudos within 4 years after posting will be automatically declined.

[cordm]

Since I searching did not turn up the change, only this idea: it was implemented in LabVIEW 2021: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-2021-Public-Beta/New-Feature-quot-Run-When-Opened-quot-Security-War...

[wiebe@CARYA]

It doesn't happen too often that an idea gets implemented, but a declined idea...!