LabWindows IDE for general purpose programming?

[querty999]

I'm coming from a Linux environment to Windows (because I have to). I'm not C a programming expert but I have several years of C programming experience. I'm pretty comfortable with it.

I'm wondering if the LabWindows IDE can be used instead of the MS VisualStudio(?) for general programming.Since I'm doing some work with CVI it would be great if I could use the CVI IDE for everything and not have to bother with VisualStudio. More specifically, I want to know if the CVI IDE can build standalone C executables that don't require the LabWindows environment for execution?

thanks!

[RobertoBozzolo]

The short answer is yes: CVI is a compiler so you can generate a standalone executable that can run on every system you want to install it on with the only prerequisite of installing the CVI Run-Time Engine too.

This does not necessarily means that CVI is a general purpose language: it is oriented and tailored to scientific and industrial environment, so for example it's not the better choice if you want to develop applications centered on database access and other similar tasks. But you want to consider its usage for a wide range of applications not necessarily related to data acquisition and instrument control ad so on.

[menchar]

I doubt you could do it - I mean, you could certainly use the CVI IDE for entering your program source, and verify that it compiles, with either the native CVI compiler (based on the open source LCC compiler from Princeton U.) or a release mode compiler (I like Intel C++ Compiler for Windows) that you can hook up to the IDE.

Building a "standalone executable that doesn't require the Lab Windows Environment" - well, of course you can do this but you wind up with a dependency on the CVI run time engine, a set of DLLs.  You can distribute the RTE freely, no license fees to NI.  But, you don't need the IDE itself.  I believe that even if you use a separate release compiler (e.g. Intels) you wind up with RTE dependencies but I could of course be wrong about this.

You might consider NetBeans 6.1, or whatever they're up to revision wise now.  I really like the editor in that IDE (free BTW) and while it's mainly used for Java I do believe it has C/C++ text entry capability but you might have to find a compiler for it.

Eclipse is available also but it wants to be the IDE for everything so yo wind up drililng through lots of "meta-info" in order to use it, in my experience, unless you find a version that someone's already tailored for use with C/C++.

Bear in mind you can't do C++ with CVI, and it uses a different event-model than Visual Studio for the GUI.  The CVI GUI doesn't look bad, but it's not the same as Visual Studio rendered apps.

You can get Measurement Studio components to add to Visual Studio, kind of going the other way, using NI stuff in Visual Studio.

CVI has C99 features now so C programming a little better than it was.

Menchar

[jr_2005]

When I first started using CVI many years ago I remember encountering a licensing statement from NI, to the effect that you could use CVI in an unlimited capacity when it was associated with NI hardware cards/instruments, but if you wanted to use it in a general purpose manner without hardware then you were limited to 25 distributions. I don't recall if this was 25 copies of any one application, or 25 applications, or even if this limitation is still in place or enforced. Might be best to check with NI before selling that application in the thousands...

JR