Consider the following recommendations and requirements for updating and patching VIs when you decide whether to use stand-alone VIs in a TestStand system:

  • Inplaceness allows LabVIEW to reuse memory a caller VI uses in a subVI, thus reducing the memory requirements of the test system. Because of inplaceness changes, a change to a subVI can affect all VIs that call the subVI even if the connector pane of the subVI remains constant, therefore forcing all calling VIs to recompile.
    Note NI recommends using LabVIEW packed project libraries to modularize a TestStand system. If you do not use LabVIEW packed project libraries, the TestStand Deployment Utility might take longer to create the deployment because the utility rebuilds the source distributions for all the VIs in the test system. The deployment utility completes this step to avoid run-time errors that might occur when the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine loads VIs that require recompilation to account for inplaceness changes.
  • Stand-alone VIs do not have version resources. If a file does not have a version resource, installers use a heuristic process to determine whether to upgrade the file. These heuristics might cause confusion when VIs are not upgraded as you expected, such as a test system in which multiple installers update a single set of utility VIs. You can use the Force File to Install option on the Distributed Files tab of the deployment utility to install files regardless of the heuristic to guarantee new files install over the files that exist on the target computer.
    Note The deployment utility automatically enables the Force File to Install option when you create a patch deployment.