While building a distribution, why does it look for the wrong version of DAQmx?

[chum80]

Hello,

I have NI-DAQmx version 9.0.2 installed on my machine.  When I look at the distribution editor in Labwindows, the available DAQ components I can include are all labeled "9.0.2".  But when I try to actually build the distribution, I'm prompted for CD 1 of NI-DAQmx 8.6 which I do not have.  How do I get around this?  I've already tried downloading that old version of DAQ, but the closest I could find was version 8.6.1.

(The project I am trying to build may have originally been created on a machine that had an old version of Labwindows/CVI and NI-DAQ.)

Thanks for the help.

-Mike

[Michael_W.]

Hi Mike,

This sounds like an unusual issue.  You could try doing a repair of DAQmx 9.0.2 in Add or Remove Programs.  I curious to see if the repair process would prompt you for the DAQm6 8.6 CD.

[WesW]

Hi Mike,

Just to clarify - this is almost certainly working correctly, and you are NOT including DAQmx 8.6 just because you are being prompted for the DAQmx 8.6 CD.  The reason is that NI software is somewhat like Legos in that a given product is made up of a number of underlying components. These components are often shared among multiple products. When you have multiple versions of products installed, over time the net effect is that you have a mix of various underlying component versions.

These components will work correctly together, but a side effect is that when you build a distribution on your machine, the deployment utilty carefully reproduces your system state by gathering together the exact versions of the necessary components that are currently installed on your machine. In this case, there is likely a component that is unique to the DAQ 8.6 distribution that was installed on that PC, and that is why it is being prompted for.  See this thread for more information.

You will have to find or download the exact CD it is asking for, because that is what you have currently installed on your system.

Regards,

- WesW

[chum80]

Hi

Thanks for the info about how NI components are built upon one another, Wes.

If I can find out which of my components use that old version of DAQ, can I just remove them and thus remove the 8.6 dependency?  Is there a way for me to found out which components are the ones I need to remove?

Alternatively,  can anyone point me to a download of DAQ 8.6?  I couldn't find it on the NI support section.  http://search.ni.com/nisearch/app/main/p/bot/no/ap/tech/lang/en/pg/1/sn/catnav:du,n13:hardwareDriver...

Thanks for your help.

-Mike

[Michael_W.]

Hi Mike,
 
It looks like 8.6 is not available.  You can try 8.6.1 here.  I don't think there is an easy way to remove only the underlying dependencies.  It is possible that uninstalling the older version and reinstalling with the latest version may remove the low level dependency.  However, if you have a lot of software installed, it is likely that much of it depends on the same lower level components.  Would it be possible to try another machine and just copy over your code before building?

[chum80]

Hi Michael

I've tried 8.6.1 and it didn't work.  It has to be the exact version.  I guess I'll have to do what you suggested: set up LabWindows on another machine and build the project there.

Thanks

-Mike

[Mert_A.]

There might be another possible workaround. The 8.6 distribution is needed because that's the one that has the exact versions that are on your machine. If you upgrade the DAQ installation on the machine, you may start getting prompted for the newer distribution. Specifically you can try installing the 8.6.1 (or later) distribution, and you might start getting prompted for the 8.6.1 distribution instead (which you will be able to provide).

Mert A.

National Instruments

[chum80]

I already have DAQ version 9.0.2 installed.  I've tried un-installing and re-installing it.

[CreviceDweller]

Mike,

I think you have encountered a significant weakness in the NI product.  I have encountered this many times and have never found a satisfactory solution.  My current solution is to keep a pile of NI-DAQ and CVI CDs on my desk.  When I do a build, and it asks for a specific CD, I shuffle through the pile until I find the CD that is needed and then hope for the best.  If my pile of CDs is high enough, I usually achieve success. 

Installing a newer version rarely helps because not all files are replaced during an upgrade so some (many?) files from the earlier CD remain on the computer.  It seems logical that the Builder could acept those files from different media but it steadfastly refuses and insists on using the CD that installed the specific file.

One extremely painful solution is to delete ALL NI software and then install from current disks and retain those disks.  That shoots most of a day.

It is also helpful to "Cache" the files that are required so that the CD is not required on subsequent builds.  While this is helpful, it doesn't really address the basic issue of needing the CDs for the first build.  It also doesn't address the case where new functionality is added to the project so that it now requires new files from an older CD.

Another strategy, if you have the disk space, is to copy every CD to you disk before installing it and then doing the install from the disk copy.  In that way the "pile of CDs" is actually on your disk rather than on your desk. 

Since not every file is included in every NI distribution, some mechanism is required to access files from an earlier distribution.  The current NI method dumps the whole problem on us poor developers.  We need NI to do more to make this a maneageable issue.  Maybe post everything somewhere on their web site?  Or explore if all of NI-DAQ will fit on a DVD?

Mert, it there hope for constructive help from NI on this issue?

[Mert_A.]

You've explained the problem very well! This is something we hear about time and time again, and as such, it's something we are trying to improve upon. Users are often confused as to why they can't substitute a newer disk when prompted for an older one. This reason is that we are looking for exact versions of products or shared components. Our first priority is to make sure the set of files on your development system (the one on which you've presumably developed and debugged your application to a working state) is exactly what gets built into your distribution. The last thing we want is for you to develop a working system, and then find out that the deployed system exhibits different behavior because slightly different versions of the files were deployed. At this point, the assumption is that if you are a developer that plans to build and distribute a software system that includes NI runtime components, you must keep your original source distributions around (on physical CDs or copied to a HD).

As I mentioned, we're trying to find ways to make this easier, without abandoning the requirement that the deployed files match the system files. One near-future addition will be a global option to always cache source distributions when they are initially installed. This solves the problem of needing the CD for the first build, but as you can imagine, it may require a significant HD storage burden.

Another approach we're looking into is providing a comprehensive online "warehouse" of NI distributions (not just the most current ones), possibly with automatic download functionality tied into the distribution build process. Of course, downloading distributions requires a networked machine, and given how many of the recent distribution volumes are DVDs, the downloads themselves could take a lot of time and bandwidth. However, without overhauling the way NI handles product packaging and dependencies, this may be the best possible solution.

None of what I have mentioned is guaranteed to get implemented, but be assured that we know this process can be difficult for developers, and we're actively trying to make things better.

Mert A.

National Instruments

Message Edited by Mert A. on 05-11-2010 04:13 PM