NI Package Management Idea Exchange

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Hi,

I'm facing almost the same problem as mentionned in this thread of the Forum : NIPB: Custom location for ProcessingStage folder - NI Community

I'm working with TestStand Framework. When building sequences for specific projects, we have a dedicated repo and we build a package to deploy that project on the target PC. The source of the project and the PBS file are in the same folder hierarchie to simplify Source Code Control.

By creating the ProcessingStage folder in the folder of the pbs you have a copy of your TestStand sequences and code modules with a risk of that you have in the same based folder the sources and the temporary files generated by build in the same location. When developing you have a risk to point on the wrong file when teststand is searchning for a file based on search directories.

If we can't change the processing stage folder destination (information is already present in the xml of the PBS file) can we imagine to add at least an option to delete the Processing stage folder after build.

Without ability to change this destination, we have to manage folder to exclude from SCC for temporary files that serve nothing after building the package.

Best regards

When you create a solution with Ni Package Builder, you have the ability to create a Local Repository for a feed.

Everytime you build it it replace all.

For me, we missed a functionnality to update a feed. A feed is able to handle multiple version of a package, if you replace all, you lost the history.

Without this functionnality, you cannot mix sources of the package for the feed. In my case, I have a feed that contains package build with TS deployment tools and packages build with NI Package Builder. To include both packages, I have to build my own tool. If NI Pacakge builder was able to update existing feed, I can build all the packages of my solution and push it to the feed in one way.

Just hoping that i will have feedback !!!!

Hi,

While trying to automate the building of packages of custom devices I found out that there was no practical way to automate what version the package should have (modifying the xml was not streightforward due to multiple namespaces)

The package builder manual shows "-v" command line option, but that will just print the version of the ni package builder itself.

I want to propose that a "--set-version" command line option is added, which takes a "x.x.x.x" formatted string and would overwrite the <Version> tag in the .pbs file.

Thank you!

If a package fails to install, there is never anything helpful presented to try to diagnose the problem.

image (8).png

This is hot garbage.

I end up having to run nipkg.exe from command line to get some modicum of feedback, but even then it's usually still insufficient.

My latest use case is that I have created a pre-install.bat file (configured to run as a pre-install custom execute, per my package build spec), and that bat file is intended to throw an error (set nonzero return code and route message to stderr) if some required dependencies do not exist. I went to the trouble of doing these sanity checks and building meaningful errors, but they don't actually get exposed when I run the installer, so I'm left guessing as to what went wrong.

I am building a custom offline installer for LabVIEW and Teststand and share it with people in my organization. I created a single installer which included both 32-bit and 64-bit LabVIEW versions and few add-ons that are required for the tools that we developed. The problem I see is if the user selects one version of LabVIEW, the add-ons for that bitness alone has to be selected automatically. But there is no option to specify such dependencies in the Package builder

Cosmetic / Minor issue

I have a solution with one underscore character in its file name. It is properly displayed in the window title bar, but undescore is missing in most recently used files, under File menu.

I made some complementary tests, with dummy solution files named Undescore_One.pbs, Undescore_One_Two.pbs and Undescore_One_Two_Three.pbs. Only the first underscore in the file name is missing in menu display:

I am using NI Package Builder 20.6.0.1227.

Regards,

When I go to download a new piece of NI software, there is an online installer which:

1) Installs the latest version of NIPM

2) Registers any needed feeds

3) Presents an installer dialog to user

4) Installs product

5) exits gracefully.

And is <10 KB in size.

It would be incredibly useful to be able to create such an installer through on of the available builder interfaces that points to (for instance) network feeds, or a partner feed, or something like that.

There are currently some "work arounds" but they all are rather complex, clunky, and require a level of BAT file execution that's not really easy.

(I could probably do this easier through LV coding, but if the LVRuntime isn't installed, that doesn't really help me :-))

You can add folders to the "inputs" in NIPB, and they will auto detect if files have been changed / added to the solution.

If you ad a folder (or a complex folder hierarchy) to a package, it disconnects ALL of the folders. I completely understand why this might be done, but it creates a slightly unexpected disconnect between the "inputs" and the "package workspace"

If files are updated, those updates propagate between both locations -- Great!

If files are added, those updates propagate to the Inputs, but NOT the workspace.

This can be pretty frustrating, especially for deeply nested folder structures...

My request is not that this is entirely switched, but rather an option to add a linked folder to the workspace... My thought is that this would function much like the "autopopulating folders" from labVIEW (vs snapshots) -- Though it would be nice if the base added folder could have it's name changed and still maintain the link (though not required).

This feature is available in the LabVIEW package builder (very cool!), but it would be helpful to have this exposed in the NI Package Builder UI as well...

Currently my work around is to either

(a) Use the SystemLink REST API and (really requires a good development pipeline for automation)

(b) Target the feed at the SystemLink internal repository folder, which will create a "hidden" repository that is unavailable in the SystemLink Browser, but can still be referenced... While not too terrible for testing, this is probably not a great approach from a security point of view...

I created a package in LabVIEW 2020 which (obviously) depends on LabVIEW runtime and other things. When I create the feed from LabVIEW, it includes all of these -- Excellent!

I have additional packages that I want to create in NI Package Builder which are add-ons to the LV solution to support a Plugin Architecture.

I can include the LabVIEW package as a dependency (assuming it's installed), but when I create the feed, it does NOT include the nested dependencies.

It would be very nice to include an option for dependencies to "Detect and Include dependencies"

Right now I can only add package dependencies that are either

(a) Currently Installed

(b) In the solution being created

It would be extremely useful to:

(a) Select a package dependency from disk

(b) Select a package from a currently registered feed

On a development system, I often DON"T want to actually install the packages i'm developing, and if I have several related "solutions" I need a way to define dependency relationship between them.

Right now I either have to develop everything in the same solution (which means every time I build, it builds everything), or am forced to install the packages that I want to include as dependencies.... neither of which are desirable behaviors

Inside a solution, you have to build all the packages inside the solution.

If you split your project in different packages, it's easier to manage it inside only one solution for managing dependecies between packages. But building a fix of a small package will force to build all packages. So if you don't want to change version of other pacakges, you need to manually manage all the version by hand and make sure you are not replacing the previous pacakge that you don't want to rebuild.

Having abaility to rebuild only the selected pacakges, willl help to create patches for only a part of a bigger project well divided in smaller components.

MaximeR

Hello,

I used to distribute a software with non-package installer. Then, we switched to a package installer. It is built using NI Package Builder.
Unfortunately, NI Package builder doesn't uninstall previous versions as it doesn't know the relationship.

Please, could you implement in the UI the possibility to specify "conflicts" and "replaces" relationships as described in this document?
http://www.ni.com/documentation/en/ni-package-manager/latest/manual/control-file-attributes/

Also discussed on the forum: https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-Package-Manager-NIPM/Nothing-but-confusion-about-building-and-using-packages/m-p/3938499/highlight/true?profile.language=fr#M91

Romain

When you add folder in NI Package Builder it add all the files included. It can be usefull to remove automatically somes files or folder with filters.

Just to give some examples. I have to include some Python Script. Python is generating *.pyc files in _pycache_ folder. If I have the ability to exclude automatically a list of extension file, or file/folder of list based on regular expressio, it can be very usefull.

My source code is under SVN source code control. When you selet a folder, it populates also hidden folder. So it adds my ".svn" folder.

Add ability to exclude hidden folder and have the first filter will help me better manage my files to distribute. This can be added to the propoerty page of the input folder.

Best regards

This probably applies more to building a NI Package via Application Builder, but would be helpful if you could do it with NI Package Builder (NIPB). It should be easier to call a VI(s) as a custom execute steps of a package. You can do this currently by making your VI follow the LabVIEW CLI pattern. However this does requiring a lot of manual entry from the user to do in NIPB, thus being error prone. Also to do with the Application Builder, you have to make a batch file and add that to project even thought the batch fill does not need to exist other than to do the install/uninstall.

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It would be nice if NI Package Builder could detect and prevent Windows path length limitations. Since where a package solution is built and where it is installed can be different, they typical building of the folder structure to be packed can run into the Windows 260 file path character limit. I would like if NIPB could detect that this will happen and relocate the packing folder automatically to avoid the issue. I would recommend a warning is issued; also, I have no issue that it might take longer to build as it would try and fail then redo in a new location.

Example:

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NI Package Management Idea Exchange

NI Package Management Idea Exchange

Custom location for ProcessingStage folder

Add ability to update a Feed for NI Package Builder

NI Package Builder: Add command line option to set the package version

Add ability to copy a package definition in NI Package Builder

Provide meaningful error messages on package installation failure

Ability to define dependencies between packages included in an offline Installer

NI Package Builder - Improve MRU file name display (first underscore is missing)

Provide ability to create "Online installers" through nipkg / NIPB / LabVIEW

NI Package Builder - Allow absolute paths for build locations

NI Package Builder - Add Ability to Link Folders to Package

NI Package Builder - Publish to SystemLink Feeds

NI Package Builder - Include nested dependencies in feeds

NI Package Builder - Specify Dependencies from Disk and/or Feed

NI Package Builder : Add indicator if all files in dir are used in the solution

Add ability to build only selected pacakges in a solution of NI Package Builder

Expose "conflicts" and "replaces" relationships in NI Package Builder UI

Add ability to exclude files with filter in NI Package Builder

Add ability to call a VI as Custom Execute

NIPB: Add option to Add File without Discovery

NIPB: Better avoidance of Long Paths