Service Pack 2, 3... for the same LabView version (e.g. 2010) instead of an annual new version of LabView 2011, 2012

[mniedernhuber]

We, your customers, are using LabView not only in a laboratory with daily changes of

the measurement setup or measurement configuration. In that case it would be nice

to have new features and more supported measurement devices.

But i'm sure that many customers, like us, are using LabView to build our own Measurement Software

for our measurement devices. This software are shiped to our own customers and we are still supporting

this software and deliver updates and fixing bugs. We still support our own software, that was build

with LabView 2009. For us it is useless to have an annual LabView version, because we can't switch,

e.g. to labView 2010. That's not possible because we can't deliver updates that are build with LabView 2010,

that won't work.

Conclution for NI:

FIX Bugs in a LabView version, release two or more Service Packs of the SAME LabView version.

Don't release an annual new version, that is useless.

Thankx

[altenbach]

I don't understand your point. Nobody is forced to upgrade.

Even now, service packs are only available for SSP subscribers. If you are on SSP, you also get the next full release, so there is really no difference.

Bug fixes are freely available as patches e.g. 2010f2.

> In that case it would be nice to have new features and more supported measurement devices.

Device support comes with the Driver DVD which can be freely upgraded at any time.

If you want new features, it seems reasonable to upgrade to a new version. It would be a nightmare to support new features for the same version. All you would get is endless confusion.

[Mads]

It would definitely be nice to have more backwards compatibility. There are other ideas and discussions here that cover that quite good though 

We always upgrade to the latest version, but there is a lot of work involved. We might keep a copy of the previous version for a while, but inevitably we only work with the latest version - and once a product has been recompiled in the new version we have to update all plug-ins as well. With a lot of products with a lot of plug-ins this becomes a major job. If a program built in 2010 could run VIs compiled in 2009 e.g. things would be much simpler.

OR it could work the other way around; 2010 could allow you to build a 2009 application - and this would work fine as long as you had not introduced any features new in 2010 (the latter could be prevented by filtering the pallettes, just like it is done for different targets).

The fact that there is a major revision every year now means that the burden, caused by the lack of backwards compatibility between major revisions, has increased. I also thing that such frequent updates have a negative effect on what type of changes we get with each updates (the value of the updates goes down, while the "price" goes up), but that's another discussion...

[mniedernhuber]

@altenback

We are SSP subscribers. Hmm, maybe my intention are not clear, i'll try again:

We deliver our own software on a DVD, setup build with the installer from NI including all

additional installers it is around 1,3 GB. Sometimes we are fixing a bug in our

software and i build an update setup, that is only around 7MB and can be downloaded

via automatic update from our software. I can't buld this update in a new version of LabView,

otherwise our customer can't start the software because of the wrong RT version.

The bug list of LabView 2010 SP1 is long and i believe that these bugs are fixed in LabView 2011.

In our case one of the open bugs in 2009 SP1 makes a problem with our software.

But i must tell our software users, "Sorry, i know that bug, but i can't fix it, because

National Instrument doesn't fix it in the used LV version".

See that long list: https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/bugs/09/archived--labview-2009-and-2009-sp1-known-issues...

But it would be nice to have, e.g. a Service pack 2, for LabView 2009 that fixes the

still known issues in 2009.

[tst]

This seems to basically be a duplicate of this idea - http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LTS-Long-term-support-vewrsion-of-LabVIEW/idi-p/109414...

[G-Money]

sjunge,

Do you feel that your idea is the same as the one linked by tst on a Long Term Support version of LabVIEW?

[mniedernhuber]

G-Money,

yes i think so, a LTS as known from Linux would be a great idea.

[G-Money]

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LTS-Long-term-support-vewrsion-of-LabVIEW/idi-p/109414...