Huge distribution kit size when implementing DAQmx

[Wim S]

Hello fellows,

I recently implemented support for the NI USB-6009 in my application. Therefore, I had to install the DAQmx libraries. Now, when I want to create a distribution kit for my application, the size of this kit increased from 25MB to about 800MB. Is there anything I can do to decrease this huge size? It's hard to believe that I need an extra 775MB, just to communicate with the USB-6009...

Thanks a lot for all hints,

Wim

[Mert_A.]

Wim,

Your distribution is now pulling in the DAQmx driver, which makes it very large.  You can likely make your installer somewhat smaller by editing your distribution settings and picking the smallest "Runtime" flavor of DAQmx to include.  You'll notice on the Drivers & Components tab, that some of the drivers have mutually exclusive subitems with radio buttons.  These are "flavors" of their installers which can be bundled with your distribution.  DAQmx has half a dozen or so flavors, but by default the full installation is selected.

Even the smallest flavor of DAQmx is fairly large, because in includes support for ALL devices.  If your distribution is still larger than you can live with, you have the option of completely deselecting DAQmx and relying on DAQmx to be installed separately from your distribution.

Mert A.
National Instruments

[Wim S]

Hi Mert,

thanks a lot for your quick response.

I noticed the different flavors, but as you said, the distribution kit is still pretty large. Is there anyway to exclude support for all devices, and just support the USB-6009 and family?

[Mert_A.]

No, the DAQmx driver is a single, monolithic bundle of support for all NI DAQmx devices.  There are pros and cons to this, the most obvious con being that the installer is huge.  Whether you choose to install the DAQmx support as part of your distribution, or separately is up to you.

Mert A.
National Instruments

[wally_666]

In my opinion the bloat in the distribution kit installers from 5.5 to 8.5 is appalling! and any benefits, escape me. 

All my users hate that I now have to ftp updates to them instead of renaming setup.exe to setup.000 (so it gets thru antivirus filters) and Emailing two or three floppy sized attachments.  Nobody has anything good to say about 8.x installer and all hate that the uninstaller is in add/remove programs instead of being a shortcut in the program group.

--wally.

[gvan]

I too have just added one analog input to an application using the USB-6009.  It seems absolutely rediculous to me that I have to install 800Mb worth of softwrae for such a simple task.  Our NI reps keeps hounding us to use NI hardware in our products and this is one of the reasons that makes using NI hardware in a non-PC, non-laboratoy product practically impossible.  I can't package an 800Mb installer/driver into a product when I can get use someone elses at a few Kb.