debugging stand-alone application (EXE)

[Stavrosyt]

Hi there,

I have an application which uses ActiveX controls to comunicate with two different devices at the same time.

I have a simulation enviroment in a computer where I got Labview 2014 installed. Here I built my program, and it runs smoothly.

I created a aplication (EXE) and then tried in the other computer which is isolated from any networks but it's the computer that operates directly the two devices.

The program runs fine except for some minor errors. I would like to debug the program in that computer, but I can't do it remotely, and it has not labview installed neither.

Do you know if there are some tools or ways to see my block diagram from the application or to see some of its parameters while is running?

I only find this paper 

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YHpiCAG&l=en-US

but it doesn't apply to my case because I have not remote access to the computer where is executing.

thanks,

[Hooovahh]

The only way to look at the block diagram of source code is to have LabVIEW installed.  

https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/bundle/labview/page/debugging-applications-and-shared-libraries.html

[Sam_Sharp]

The Desktop Execution Trace Toolkit can be used to view trace information from a running executable - it will show you generated internal errors / references / queue operations etc.

Again, you will need it installed on the PC to use it and I think it also requires some VI Server configuration to connect to the executable.

[RTSLVU]

When I had a similar situation National Instruments support told me to install LabView on the target machine in evaluation mode.

That gives you 90(?) days to troubleshoot the program, and if that is not long enough just uninstall and install it again for another trial period.

YES, National Instruments support told me to do that. 

[Hooovahh]

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@RTSLVU wrote:

YES, National Instruments support told me to do that. 

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Did they also tell you to turn your clock back if you are on the bubble?  It works to some extent, but at some point it realizes you've tampered with it and ends your trial.  That was also some advice from support.

[Bob_Schor · Accepted solution]

A tried and true (and very old!) method that will work with an Executable is to build in logging functions.  I had a Real-Time program that seemed to be losing clock ticks.  It was already streaming state information to the PC, but something was getting "lost".  I added code to write to a local log file certain "Debug" information, including the state of some of my digital lines, and found where my "assumptions" about my code were false (i.e. found my stupid mistake).

Depending on your situation, this might involve a lot of text to read, but that's why we have Text Editors with pattern matching ...

Bob Schor