NI Package Builder ProcessingStage

[jyoung8711]

I just updated to the latest version of the NI Package Builder.  It seems when I build a package, NIPB is now putting a "ProcessingStage" Folder inside the same directory as my pbs file...

This appears to be a complete copy of all source files... which is (a) doubling the size of binary files on my harddisk and (b) wreaking havoc on my source code control by introducing a ton of new files that I now have to manually delete.

This is in addition to the build directory placed in the "target" location which contains yet another copy of the files to be deployed...

I'm not sure if this is an intentional change somewhere or a side effect of something else...but it's a bit unpleasant. I think it would be much preferable for this to be created in a temp directory like %temp% or %localappdata% and then be cleaned up after the package build...

Thanks in advance.

[Scott_Richardson]

Hi Justin, NI Package Builder does need to stage the files because there are cases where it modifies the files, such as TestStand sequence files relative paths to code module files. Unfortunately NI Package Builder does not have a mechanism to change the static location to anything other than a ProcessingStage subdirectory under the solution's directory. We do have a backlog placeholder feature to consider allowing this path to be customized and/or use the temp directory. I do not expect us to implement such a feature in the short term.

[jyoung8711]

Thanks for the quick response Scott...

Is there a reason that NIPB doesn't delete this directory? 

Also, looks like I do have to correct my previous statement... It doesn't indeed look like this is not a new thing... but rather that I moved a couple of my pbs folders into locations where this folder (and the sometimes hundreds of files) are a lot more obvious.

[CL_eisenwr]

I have not used the latest NIPB version, but at least in previous version you just run Build->Clean Solution after you build and have the files removed. I had automated it previously in batch file as NIPB does have command-line interface.

[Scott_Richardson]

Justin, the purpose of the keeping the image directory is to support the case where the user wants to deploy the image as is via the network and use a script to copy the files instead of deploying using a package. The TSDU by default places the staging files in an \Image\ subdirectory off of the .tsd directory, and the UI exposes this in the "Location of Deployable Image" text control. NIPB currently does not support changing.

Yes, Bill's workaround is a viable mitigation.