LabVIEW for Linux: Create an app to run from a command line

[Vladiator]

I need to convert a Windows LabVIEW app to Linux. Before I buy a Linux version of LabVIEW, it is possible to build an application in Linux to run from a command line with options (say I want to load a config file etc).

Thanks!

[Dennis_Knutson]

It should work the same way as the windows version with the Application:Command Line Arguements property. At the least the help does not say Windows only.

[rolfk]

As Dennis says that should work just fine. The only possible problem is when you want to run the application healdless too (without GUI). LabVIEW normally expects a fully working X Windows manager to run at all.

[Vladiator]

Is there a way to launch a LabVIEW app from a command line without GUI?

What does X Windows Manager do?

[rolfk]

X Windows Manager provides an interface to render the windows and basic widgets on screen, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System.

LabVIEW for Linux has in principle a rather hard dependency on some form of Windows manager being present. During startup of LabVIEW this X Window manager is initialized and if it isn't present all kind of havoc can occur.

I think there was some semi documented INI file setting that one could use to allow a LabVIEW app to start up even if no X Window manager was installed but that had its own difficulties. In my experience it wasn't really worth the hassles. The easier solution was usually to install a minimal X Window server such as a text only variant so that the dependency was properly satisfied and LabVIEW could initialize everything properly, eventhough no user interface was later displayed in the LabVIEW app.

[Vladiator]

Just an update: We had to cancel the project since NI does not have a 64-bit version of LabVIEW for Linux. The only LabVIEW version for Linux is 32-bit and we could not even install it on a 64-bit machine.

[Randy_H]

I wanted to throw in an idea. When you build a LabVIEW built DLL with the Application Builder, there is an oprion in the Advanced page to link to the Embedded Run-Time Engine. This RTE is closer to what we have for LabVIEW RT. It has no links to any of the GUI libraries. NI-DAQmx Base uses this method to achieve the C Interface of the product. Now, this will only build DLLs. That means you would need to write a small C wrapper as the executable. You can add your command line parsing in there and then pass the options down to the LabVIEW built DLL. I have personally written command line utilities (like lsdaq for NI-DAQmx Base) that do this.

As for a LabVIEW for Linux that is 64-bit, you never know what the future might hold.

[Vladiator]

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@Randy_H wrote:

I wanted to throw in an idea. When you build a LabVIEW built DLL with the Application Builder, there is an oprion in the Advanced page to link to the Embedded Run-Time Engine. This RTE is closer to what we have for LabVIEW RT. It has no links to any of the GUI libraries. NI-DAQmx Base uses this method to achieve the C Interface of the product. Now, this will only build DLLs. That means you would need to write a small C wrapper as the executable. You can add your command line parsing in there and then pass the options down to the LabVIEW built DLL. I have personally written command line utilities (like lsdaq for NI-DAQmx Base) that do this.

As for a LabVIEW for Linux that is 64-bit, you never know what the future might hold.

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Randy, the project is on and it is quite successful thanks to your help. 

Could you elaborate for to do this in Linux? You can only build a shared or a packed library in Linux. 

[Michel_Gauvin]

I have used this successfully:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/5D6EC36DCF43343786257449006919E6