Installer problems

[marausch]

We are developing applications using LabWindows/CVI 8.0 and 8.1 (they ar both installed on the same computer).
The installer we made creates a couple of subdirectories in the main application directory.
We have 3 problems.

1) We need to permit end-users to install multiple instances of the application in different target directories
using the same installer. This seems to be impossible because of the versioning mechanism.

2) The installer created with CVI 8.1 doesn't correctly manage a directory change operated during install
by the end-user. The application directory is placed at the location chosen by the user, but subdirectories
are placed in their default locations, specified by us at build time.

3) The installer always asks for a reboot of the system, witch in fact isn't needed in our case.

How can we solve these problems?

Thank You in advance.

[Former NI Employee MS]

Hi Maraush,

Here is some answers to your question.

1. Here is some more about installer versioning with CVI. I don't think that what you want to do can be done directly. According to my understanding, what you should try is building an executable of your application. Then, install this executable in multiple directories.

2. This is a known bug. You should wait for the next CVI maintenace version.

3. There is a KB dealing with supressing reboot with LabWINDOWS/CVI distribution kit installer. It should help you.

Let me know if this helps.
Regards,

Message Edité par Mathieu Steiner le 05-03-2007 08:58 AM

[Mert_A.]

Just to add to what Mathieu has said, the MSI technology on which the installers is not well designed to have a single installer create multiple installations on a machine.  As Mathieu suggested, you can have one installation that installs many identical copies of a file to different directories.  However, as an example, if you wanted to allow each user on a machine to independently run the installer and install the same package to their own user directory without removing other users' installations, this would not be possible with the distributions built by CVI.  MSI does support the concept of per-user installations, but it is not supported by our distributions.  You might prefer to use something like a simple .zip file for your purposes.

Also, the maintenance release Mathieu mentioned should be available before the end of this month, so you should not have to wait long.

Mert A.
National Instruments

[marausch]

Thank you for all your precious informations!

1) The best solution is perhaps to install the application once, then making as many copies as needed of the whole application's directory, and creating the desired icons by hand.

2) We'll wait! 🙂

3) I read the KB mentioned by Mathieu, but I couldn't find the reason why the installer asks for a reboot. When we build the installer, the only "Driver and Components" we have are "Standard Run-Time", "ActiveX Container Support" and "3D Graph Control Support", and we are working with CVI 8.0.1 on Windows XP Professional SP2.

Thank you again for your help.
Michael Rausch

[LuisG]

Michael,

The roboot is there because of the standard run-time. Some of the functions in the utility library require a reboot.

Luis