Why the installer file built by LabVIEW8.5 is so large?

[smercurio_fc]

---

tst wrote: 

---

Anyway, thanks for the tip about downgrading. I shall spend a day reading a book and installing all those intermediate versions of LV I need. It will be interesting to see if it works (I have doubts).

---

I would be careful with that. These versions weren't really designed to be installed side by side in reverse order, especially if you install drivers as well (because drivers are shared and are not equally supported in different versions). It should be easier to ask your local NI office to do this.

---

I agree with this, especially if you're going all the way back to 6.1. One alternative is to create virtual machines for the individual LabVIEW installations. Don't know if that's going to be faster and/or less work than trying to contact your local NI sales office.

Another thing to consider is that going down in versions isn't as "clean" as going up in versions, especially if you've modified the code to take advantage of features that exist in newer versions (one of the primary reasons for upgrading). In this case you would need to recode the VI using whatever's available in 6.1. Do you not have a backup of the code in 6.1?

[jimfoxy]

Thanks for the wisdom, guys.

Managed to go backwards to 8.0 successfully but the jump to 7.1 didn't work easily. At least one of the standard time VIs changed and will need me to do some digging around and manually exchanging the 6.1 VIs I used (or something that works).

Yes, I have my original 6.1 source but I've spent a lot of time developing it forward in 8.5 on and off over a number of months. Only after I had invested quite a lot of time in devlopment did I build the executable and installer and realise how big it was - a stupid mistake.

I shall probably stick to what I have in 8.5 and keep my head down, unless I find the time to make it more efficient by going back to 6.1. Along with non-NI support files, it still all just about fits on a 8cm CD which has been our distribution media of choice. I'll know better next time.