Custom VeriStand Steps for TestStand Feedback

[ElectricWraith]

FYI, just tried both the _v310 (which is actually the one I need, forgot I was running VS2013 SP1)  and the _v300 installers and they don't appear to like network licenses. It doesn't detect a license for TS when trying to remove the old insertion palette items. I get the activation dialog and when I click Exit TestStand, I get an unhandled exception error.

This is less of a concern for me because my lab workstation (2012 versions) use a local license, but I thought I'd let you know.

[Kevin_F]

Hmm, the steps aren't licensed at all. I wonder what we are calling into that is behaving strangely in that situation.

[ElectricWraith]

There was a DOS (yes, I'm old, call it a command prompt box) box that popped up right before the license activation dialog, the title on it was RemoveOldInsertionPaletteItems or something like that.

[Kevin_F]

Was TestStand open when you ran the installer? I think you will run into issues with the new installer if it is and if the active version of TestStand isn't the one you want the steps installed for.  That installer step is trying to clean up a bunch of the old stuff we left around from earlier versions of the steps.

[ElectricWraith]

No, I had closed TS, then opened MAX to verify which version I had, saw that it was 2013 SP1, closed MAX, downloaded the _v310 installer and ran it.

[Holt]

Kevin,

I downloaded _v310 and I'm testing out the Start_VS_Logging step for the first time. 

Here is a capture of the step's configuration:

Here is the error I get when I run the sequence:

Any ideas?  I've tried different paths so I don't think that is the issue.

Thanks.

[Kevin_F]

I didn't actually implement that one but paths would be my guess. That is the path for logging on the gateway machine and you need to have write access to it.

Anything in advanced properties?

[Kevin_F]

Hey ElectricWraith,

Any luck using the 2013 SP1 steps? After looking through the error messages for the 2012 stuff I am pretty sure those are some of the issues we fixed with the 2013 and 2013 SP1 versions.  If you are still having trouble getting it to install I can build an installer that doesn't do that clean up step.

[User002]

Holt,

I developed that step.  I'm pretty sure you started a log and then did something to abort the sequence.  When you did that, you left the log running.  It'll keep running until the system undeploys or until you execute a Stop Logging step.

One easy way to do this, once it has been done, is to make a new sequence and drop just a Stop Logging step into it. 

A better way is to keep the Stop Logging step in your Cleanup section, and never Abort unless you absolutely have to - Terminate instead so the Cleanup section runs, stopping your log.

What I am trying to do in the next couple of days is to add the logic to stop and restart the log in this case, recovering gracefully and running as expected, while giving the user a warning in the report.  I hesitated in doing this, because it gets a little easy to abuse the system that way.  I  don't want users accidentally running logs when they think their sequence file is stopped.  Do you have any thoughts on this?

Thanks

[Holt]

HandyAndy,

I created a new VS project and just added a single user channel to simplify the test.  I'm also deploying it to Windows.  I placed the Stop logging step in the cleanup and I get the same error.