NI Package Management Idea Exchange

I propose to allow adding dependencies in NI Package Builder that is not part of the active solution - and that are not NI packages. It should be possible to press "add dependency" and then type in the package name as free text

It would be helpful to have the ability to duplicated portions of a Solution, such as package. This would speed up the creation of similar items using an existing as a starting point. I was looking for a button and/or right-click entry to duplicate a Package. However, the ability to duplicate would helpful throughout the NIPM GUI.

Hello

In addition to the idea mentioned in the following post, 

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Additional-NI-Software-Idea/NIPM-queued-amp-scheduled-download-amp-install/idc-p/3963380#M541

would like to propose that the NI offline package to be installed entirely in offline mode, rather than trying to connect and fail, whenever a connection seemed present. 

and on top of that, offline installers to be able to be integrated into a local repository in our own network, and packaged distributions can be directed to them, as not all operation PCs are given access to the internet. For the time being, let the browsers handle auto-resuming downloads. 

NI Packages have attributes for Homepage and Maintainer's Email as listed in the control file. It would be nice to at least have an option to display the information in NI Package Manager.

can NIPM separate the download and install as 2 separate processes? for instance, download (or queued for download, with scheduled to avoid congestion) into local storage, and install (or scheduled for install, normally after work hours once download is completed) from storage once download is finished. and while at it, allow a local PC to be the repository (that can be set to automatically update itself) and all deployment package can be pointed to download from that storage instead. 

an auto-resuming download manager would be nice too...

I am currently facing difficulties upgrading/downloading LV2019 using NIPM and have to break down the 'steak' into 'flakes' due to slow and unstable connection, because the NIPM restarted every time it encounters a problem.

It would be helpful to be able to define additional Categories/Sections for NI Packages. This would help users quickly narrow down searches to find packages. This is needed since there is not a way to filter the packages by feed in NI Package Manager.

Current NI Package Categories/Sections

[Edit: 2022-May-10] Moving to LabVIEW Idea Exchange as NI Package Manager and NI Package Builder support custom category values.

This *may* be a niche request, I think a few people may find this useful...

Basically, I would like the "Browse Products" section of the NI Package Manager, but with the ability to run the application from that same window and allow it to display MY built applications. I essentially want a singular place to easily manage and navigate the stand-alone VIs I have deployed onto a machine that my students can access. Oh! And allow non-admin users to access this. 

What I envision is a package manager-like program (I'll refer to it as the Application Manager) where an end user can subscribe to feeds of packages (as is currently the case in NIPM). When this Application Manager is opened, it allows you to 1) view the programs already installed on your machine via this feed and provides a link OPEN this file (or just go to the folder where it is stored) on your PC, 2) install programs from the feed(s) you subscribe to and 3) make any updates to programs from the feed that have an update.

For example, a student opens up this Application Manager that has been subscribed to the "Mech Engineering" feed, which contains the package for temperature, voltage and distance sensing VIs. The "browse products" window displays these three VIs, and the user can open each of these VIs from this window. If the Temperature program has an update, some indicator will show that, and they can install the update and then open the updated version.

Ability to request to be (automatically) notified via email of patches and updates to a particular software or driver package.  NI Package Manager will only give me updates if I am online and for software I have installed.

It would appear that NI Package Manager requires elevated privileges via User Account Control to even run.

Whilst clearly for some actions this will be required for some install/uninstall actions and e.g. changing registry entries, it isn't clear why this is needed simply to open Package Manager to view what is installed and for other actions which may only make JKI VI Package Manager type changes to VIs within vi.lib etc.

If the medium/long term plan is for NI Package Manager to replace JKI VI Package Manager then it needs to support the ability for developers to easily add/remove VI packages without requiring IT administrator assistance each time.

It would be much better if the application was structured such that elevation is only required when this is absolutely necessary for the actions being undertaken at that moment and/or the user is able to explicitly run the application with elevated privileges where these will be required.

I did try to post this in Additional NI Software Idea Exchange and that wasn't possible but please move this should there be somewhere more appropriate.