When regenerating an application should the .exe file always be identical?

[MaxDemian]

I have been given the task of vaulting (putting into SVN) code created by someone who has left the company. To check that I was checking-in the right files I built the application again using the build specification that appears to have been used originally but the .exe file ends up a different size from the original. I'm using LabView2011 Version11.0 32 bit. I was wondering whether builds are date stamped or something like that and so end up a different size when you recreate them.

Thanks

[crossrulz]

EXEs have timestamps in them.  That is not just a LabVIEW issue.  I remember looking at this issue many years ago.  I found that building on different systems could make some major differences in the built EXE.  Granted, that was done back with 8.6.  I'm not sure what changes NI might have done since.  Hopefully we can get one of them to chime in.

[MaxDemian]

Thanks for that, we thought that might explain it.

We suspect that the original build may have been on a different PC so we are not sure if the Labview installation on that machine was identical. I'd be interested if any NI staff can provide any more information on the subject though....

Obviously my concern is that there might be a "lost edit" that got into the build that has been deployed but has not been saved in the project that is stored on the system. If there is any clever way of working this out without essentially requalifying the application I'd be very interested to know it.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers