Deploy a .NET app with NI dlls?

[CarpeCimex]

Hello all,

I hope I have the right place here.

I have a .NET utility I wrote in C# in Visual Studio 13 which I'd like to make freely available.  It uses the NationalInstruments.Common and NationalInstruments.NI4882 dlls to directly read a GPIB instrument.  I have LabView installed and it runs fine on my development system, but when I publish my app and try to install and run on another machine I get an unhandled exception error:

"System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'NationalInstruments.NI4882.Internal.GpibDll' threw an exception. ---> System.DllNotFoundException: The NI-488.2 Driver library cannot be found.  Either Gpib is not installed, or Gpib is improperly installed. ---> System.DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'ni4882.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

Am I publishing my app incorrectly, or is it not possible to include the NI dlls along with it?  Are the dlls proprietary, so they'll only work if a person has LabView or equivalent installed?

Thanks for any help,

Gerrit

[Dennis_Knutson]

Just like on your development computer, you have to actually install the NI-488 driver. It is not part of your .NET build. If you are using the recommended VISA api, that has to be installed as well, though there is a smaller runtime only version that you can use. Any instrument driver that you distribute should be compliant with the IVI standard so there might be additional dependencies as well.

[CarpeCimex]

Thanks, Dennis.  Can I rely on my app working on someone's computer regardless of how they've installed their NI-488 driver, or is there something I need to do to be able to find it on a given machine?  Will my app only look for it in the folder where it exists on my machine, for example?

Gerrit

[Dennis_Knutson]

The driver should be installed to the default Windows folder. The installation process also includes a validation that the driver is installed correctly. Didn't you install the driver on your pc?

[CarpeCimex · Accepted solution]

Yes, I installed the driver on my PC along with LabView, but I don't want users of my utility to be required to have LabView.

I found that you can download and install official NI-488-2 drivers at no charge from here, as long as you don't specify to install support for LabView, etc.  If you just specify .NET and/or C/C++ support it installs drivers without requiring registration.  So this is a good solution -- even non LabView users can get GPIB drivers from NI and use them with my utility.

[Dennis_Knutson]

That is exactly the same thing you did originally except you probably installed the driver from a dvd. The installation of NI-488 has always been free and always separate from LabVIEW.