Is LabVIEW’s Installer Engine officially deprecated? Windows SAC making it unusable.

[BertMcMahan]

I hope this doesn't derail things TOO much, but my company's been trying to switch to Intune-based software handling over our network. I don't have any experience with that, but my IT guy is reporting it's... not going great. He's had a lot of mysterious issues with it.

Any of you had success with the NIPM-based solution? It looks like it's got some CLI tools that probably make things easier, but there's a difference between theory and practice 🙂

[Hooovahh]

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@rolfk wrote:

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Haven't seen any InnoSetup based LabVIEW toolkits anywhere. I mean, aside from the fact that project plugins are a pitta to create and debug, it would be absolutely not impossible to create a InnoSetup based project target option. It may not do everything you ever would like, but for a majority of applications it would be enough.

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I saw a project provider toolkit made to make Inno setup installers.  It was by VIE/Konrad/Averna?  It wasn't ready for public release when I saw it but I thought there was going to be an effort to release it, but maybe not since I haven't seen anything.

I do use Inno Setup for getting around NI installer limitations.  There are times I will make an installer in Application Builder, then call it silently from an Inno Setup to have more control over things, like multiple installers, Pre/Post install calls, registering file extensions, and running Powershell scripts.

[rolfk]

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@Hooovahh wrote:

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@rolfk wrote:

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Haven't seen any InnoSetup based LabVIEW toolkits anywhere. I mean, aside from the fact that project plugins are a pitta to create and debug, it would be absolutely not impossible to create a InnoSetup based project target option. It may not do everything you ever would like, but for a majority of applications it would be enough.

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I saw a project provider toolkit made to make Inno setup installers.  It was by VIE/Konrad/Averna?  It wasn't ready for public release when I saw it but I thought there was going to be an effort to release it, but maybe not since I haven't seen anything.

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I think the trouble with such a Toolkit would be that it relies heavily on semi- to non-documented LabVIEW details, NI's driver infrastructure and installer packaging. And of course an ever moving target as NI makes frequent changes to what drivers contain what elements and depend on what other software component and all that information is treated as "no need to know for anyone outside NI". That goes far beyond the change from MSI to nipkg and how they managed to make some nipkg installs even slower than the MSI installs, which already could be very bad. That alone would already be a major reason to try to use Innosetup which usually generates installers that are so instantaneous that you can't even show your nice logo in a meaningful way before the installer declares victory. 😀

[Lee2845]

I'm having the same problem now and I'm not sure how to proceed, having only used the application builder to create exes and installers in the past. I've signed everything I can and I was hoping that would be enough to satisfy windows, but as our clients have limited or no internet access and often have their machines locked down by IT policies the installers are immediately blocked as SAC just becomes ultra paranoid without a connection.

If I moved to the Inno Setup Installer as you suggest, would I be able to install the Labview runtime by packaging the files in the 'C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\LabVIEW Run-Time\XXXX folder' up in a different installer? I'm a bit concerned that without the application builder sentience I'm going to get myself in a mess with VISA  etc.

Thanks

[Hooovahh]

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@Lee2845 wrote:

If I moved to the Inno Setup Installer as you suggest, would I be able to install the Labview runtime by packaging the files in the 'C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\LabVIEW Run-Time\XXXX folder' up in a different installer? I'm a bit concerned that without the application builder sentience I'm going to get myself in a mess with VISA  etc.

Thanks

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In the past the way I've handled this, is by having the Application Builder make the installer, which only includes runtimes engines.  You can specify them in the Additional Installers, then include no EXE.  The build will then create an installer that if you run will install all the runtime engines and NI things you specified.  InnoSetup can then call this silently, as part of the installer.  The other part of the installer can be to install your EXE, add shortcuts, edit registry etc.  I know NI has wanted to move away from the MSI installer stuff and push to NIPM.  But for me this older method works great on test machines that will only have my application and not a development environment that is updating and changing all the time.

[Lee2845]

Thanks very much for your response. What I'm not sure about is does any installer produced by the application builder now suffer the same problems with windows SAC regardless of how I split them (runtime and application)? At the moment my standard application builder produced (single) installer fails practically immediately when it attempts to copy a '.bin' file to a temp directory when I attempt the installation offline, which just seems like a systemic problem that I won't be able to get around. Will calling my standard application builder produced installer from the Inno Setup installer solve this issue do you think? Would the silent call be handled differently? The windows SAC seems very opaque with probable moving goalposts so there probably isn't an answer to this...

[Hooovahh]

Well you can give it a try, but it seems like the InnoSetup installer takes care of some kind of Windows access.  You obviously get prompted to run the installer if you have the settings on UAC, but I only see that one prompt no matter how sub-installers that installer runs.  I'm unsure about SAC, I haven't ran into issues with that on my testers.

[Lee2845]

Thanks again, yes will give it a try.